An anonymous reader shares a report: China's craze over generative artificial intelligence has triggered a flurry of product announcements from startups and tech giants on an almost daily basis, but investors are warning a shakeout is imminent as cost and profit pressures grow. The buzz in China, first ignited by the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT almost a year ago, has given rise to what a senior Tencent executive described this month as "war of a hundred models", as it and rivals from Baidu to Alibaba to Huawei promote their offerings. China now has at least 130 large language models, accounting for 40% of the global total and just behind the United States' 50% share, according to brokerage CLSA.

Additionally, companies have also announced dozens of "industry-specific LLMs" that link to their core model. However, investors and analysts say that most were yet to find viable business models, were too similar to each other and were now grappling with surging costs. Tensions between Beijing and Washington have also weighed on the sector, as U.S. dollar funds invest less in early-stage projects and difficulties obtaining AI chips made by the likes of Nvidia start to bite. "Only those with the strongest capabilities will survive," said Esme Pau, head of China internet and digital asset research at Macquarie Group, who expects consolidation and a price war as players compete for users.

The European Commission has re-imposed a fine of about $400 million on chipmaker Intel for abusing its dominant position in the x86 processor market. The move is the latest twist in an antitrust saga that has been now running for more than two decades. The Register: According to the Commission, the fine is in response to previously established anticompetitive practices by the silicon giant, aimed at excluding competitors from the market in breach of EU competition rules. The original fine handed to Intel in 2009 was for $1.2 billion, based on findings that the company had given incentives to PC makers to use its CPUs instead of those from rivals, or else delay the launch of specific products containing rival chips.

These incentives consisted of wholly or partially hidden rebates for using Intel chips, or payments in order to delay launching products with rival chips, amounting to so-called "naked restrictions." It ultimately goes back to complaints from rival CPU maker AMD in 2000 and again in 2003 that Intel was engaging in anticompetitive conduct by offering rebates to vendors to favor Intel components. Intel fought the decision, but an appeal by the Silicon Valley outfit to have it overturned was initially denied in 2014. Then in 2022, the EU General Court partially annulled the 2009 ruling by the Commission, in particular the findings related to Intel's conditional rebates, and went on to nix the fine imposed on the company in its entirety.

NASA, in a press release: Jupiter's moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon. Astronomers using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa.

Analysis indicates that this carbon likely originated in the subsurface ocean and was not delivered by meteorites or other external sources. Moreover, it was deposited on a geologically recent timescale. This discovery has important implications for the potential habitability of Europa's ocean. "On Earth, life likes chemical diversity -- the more diversity, the better. We're carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa's ocean will help us determine whether it's hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life," said Geronimo Villanueva of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings. "We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa's surface came from the ocean. That's not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element," added Samantha Trumbo of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, lead author of the second paper analyzing these data. NASA plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to further investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life, in October 2024.

The White House is considering requiring cloud computing firms to report some information about their customers to the U.S. government, Semafor reported Friday, citing people familiar with an upcoming executive order on AI. From the report: The provision would direct the Commerce Department to write rules forcing cloud companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to disclose when a customer purchases computing resources beyond a certain threshold. The order hasn't been finalized and specifics of it could still change. Similar "know-your-customer" policies already exist in the banking sector to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities, such as the law mandating firms to report cash transactions exceeding $10,000.

In this case, the rules are intended to create a system that would allow the U.S. government to identify potential AI threats ahead of time, particularly those coming from entities in foreign countries. If a company in the Middle East began building a powerful large language model using Amazon Web Services, for example, the reporting requirement would theoretically give American authorities an early warning about it. The policy proposal represents a potential step toward treating computing power -- or the technical capacity AI systems need to perform tasks -- like a national resource. Mining Bitcoin, developing video games, and running AI models like ChatGPT all require large amounts of compute.

The Federal Communications Commission is taking steps to restrict Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers from easily accessing US telephone numbers. Over the past several years, robocallers have exploited VoIP providers to inundate US citizens with unwanted calls, many of which come from falsified numbers. Previously, the regulations allowed VoIP services relatively uncomplicated access to US phone numbers. ArsTechnica: But under rules adopted by the FCC yesterday, VoIP providers will face some extra hurdles. They will have to "make robocall-related certifications to help ensure compliance with the Commission's rules targeting illegal robocalls," and "disclose and keep current information about their ownership, including foreign ownership, to mitigate the risk of providing bad actors abroad with access to US numbering resources," the FCC said. The FCC order will take effect 30 days after it's published in the Federal Register. A public draft of the order was released ahead of the FCC meeting.

Unity has announced some key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month. From a report: It's easing up on some big aspects of the previously announced charges, removing the fee from the Unity Personal tier entirely, although it still remains in a revised form on the Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise tiers. In short, as originally announced, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, Unity would start charging developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count.

The different tiers of Unity plans - Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise - had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passes $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs. Unity announced today, however, that there will be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. They will also be increasing financial theshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000 and will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.

schwit1 writes:

China's exports of two rare minerals essential for manufacturing semiconductors fell to zero in August, a month after Beijing imposed curbs on sales overseas, citing national security. China produces about 80% of the world's gallium and about 60% of germanium, according to the Critical Raw Materials Alliance, but it didn't sell any of the elements on international markets last month, Chinese customs data released on Wednesday showed. In July, the country exported 5.15 metric tons of forged gallium products and 8.1 metric tons of forged germanium products.

When asked about the lack of exports last month, He Yadong, a spokesperson from China's commerce ministry told a press briefing Thursday that the department had received applications from companies to export the two materials. Some applications had been approved, he said, without elaborating. The curbs are indicative of China's apparent willingness to retaliate against US export controls, despite concerns about economic growth, as a tech war simmers.

Nobody ever said weaning ourselves off the CCP would be easy, Schwit1 adds.

The U.S. Treasury Department and China's Ministry of Finance launched a pair of economic working groups on Friday in an effort to ease tensions and deepen ties between the nations. From a report: Led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice Premier He Lifeng, the working groups will be divided into economic and financial segments. The working groups will "establish a durable channel of communication between the world's two largest economies," Yellen said in a series of tweets detailing the announcement. She said the groups will "serve as important forums to communicate America's interests and concerns, promote a healthy economic competition between our two countries with a level playing field for American workers and businesses."

The announcement follows a string of high-ranking administration officials' visits to China this year, which sets the stage for a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in November at an Asia-Pacific economic conference in San Francisco. China is one of the United States' biggest trading partners, and economic competition between the two nations has increased in recent years. The two finance ministers have agreed to meet at a "regular cadence," the Treasury Department said in a news release.

In his first major public interview since the DMV cut their San Francisco fleet in half, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said "we cannot expect perfection" from the self-driving cars, and vaguely threatened to leave town if regulators curtail them any further. From a report: The self-driving robotaxis of GM subsidiary Cruise and Google-owned Waymo seemed like they were heading in a successful direction when they won approval from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last month to run their self-driving robotaxis at all hours in SF without restrictions. But barely a week later, the California DMV demanded Cruise cut it SF fleet in half, following post-Outside Lands stalling incidents, a night of multiple accidents, and SF City Attorney David Chiu filing a motion to get the CPUC to reverse their decision.

Cruse CEO Kyle Vogt sat down for a (very friendly) 40-minute interview Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, which can be seen in its entirety above. And he seems to be going on offense against the regulatory pushback his company is getting from SF and California lawmakers. "It's kind of fun as a society to poke at the differences between AVs (autonomous vehicles) and humans, but if we're serious about safety in our cities, we should be rolling out the red carpet for AVs," Vogt said, according to the SF Standard.

How many smartphone brands do you think have left the market since 2017? The likes of LG probably come to mind, then there are the many local, lesser-known brands. Maybe fifty, or one hundred? The actual figure is, astoundingly, nearly 500. TechSpot: Counterpoint Research's analysis shows that at its peak in 2017, there were more than 700 smartphone brands contributing to the 1.5 billion units sold annually. In 2023, that number is down by a third to almost 250. Nearly all of those brands that have shuttered over the last five years were local ones found in locations such as India, the Middle East, Africa, China, Japan, and South Korea. The number of global brands such as Samsung has remained consistent at over 30.

Counterpoint Research highlights several reasons behind the shrinking number of brands over the last seven years. The pandemic and component shortages that began in 2020 had a massive impact, while the global economic slowdown following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has caused many smaller smartphone companies to shutter. The local brands have also been dealing with other factors killing off their businesses. More people are holding onto their devices for longer before upgrading, cheaper phones are improving in quality all the time, there's a maturing user base, we've seen technology transitions such as that from 4G to 5G, and a handful of big brands are holding on to more of the market.

Amazon, following other streaming platforms looking to further monetize their content, will run ads on its Prime Video service in key markets -- a move that will help offset rising costs and provide a boost to an already robust advertising business. From a report: Ad-supported streaming will be the default on Prime Video in US, UK, Germany and Canada starting early next year, the company said in a statement on Friday. The company has long offered video streaming as part of a package that also includes speedy shipping, music and other perks. Amazon said Prime subsribers will continue to pay $139 annually in the US but will be able to pay an additional $2.99 a month to avoid ads. Pricing in other countries will be anounced later, the company said.

Esper: Starting in Android 14, it may not be necessary to use a third-party app to turn your smartphone into a webcam for your PC, as that functionality is getting baked into the Android OS itself -- though there's a catch.

When you plug an Android phone into a PC, you have the option to change the USB mode between file transfer/Android Auto (MTP), USB tethering (NCM), MIDI, or PTP. In Android 14, however, a new option can appear in USB Preferences: USB webcam. Selecting this option switches the USB mode to UVC (USB Video Class), provided the device supports it, turning your Android device into a standard USB webcam that other devices will recognize, including Windows, macOS, and Linux PCs, and possibly even other Android devices.

Webcam support in Android 14 is not enabled out of the box, however. In order to enable it, four things are required: a Linux kernel config needs to be enabled, the UVC device needs to be configured, the USB HAL needs to be updated, and a new system app needs to be preloaded.

An anonymous reader shares a news story: A report by dappGambl based on data provided by NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap showed that out of 73,257 NFT collections the researchers looked at, 69,795 of them, or slightly over 95%, had a market cap of zero ether. By their estimates, almost 23 million people hold these worthless assets. "This daunting reality should serve as a sobering check on the euphoria that has often surrounded the NFT space," the researchers said. "Amid stories of digital art pieces selling for millions and overnight success stories, it is easy to overlook the fact that the market is fraught with pitfalls and potential losses."

NFTs are digital representations of art or collectibles tied to a blockchain, typically ethereum, and each one has a unique signature that cannot be duplicated. In 2021 and 2022, the NFT market saw a huge bull run, at one point leading to $2.8 billion in monthly trading volume. During that time, popular collections such as Bored Apes and CryptoPunks were selling for millions of dollars, and celebrities such as Stephen Curry and Snoop Dogg participated in the hype. The boom coincided with cryptocurrency's peak when bitcoin was trading close to $70,000. On Wednesday, the price of the crypto hovered just above $27,000. dappGambl's study shows 79% of all NFT collections currently remain unsold, and the surplus of supply over demand has created a buyer's market that isn't doing anything to revive enthusiasm.

Brazilian engineer Luiz Andre Barroso, who ripped up the rulebook at Google, has died. His radical ideas for data centers laid the foundations for cloud computing. Wired: Luiz Andre Barroso had never designed a data center before Google asked him to do it in the early 2000s. By the time he finished his first, he had overturned many conventions of the computing industry, laying the foundations for Silicon Valley's development of cloud computing.

Barroso, a 22-year veteran of Google who unexpectedly died on September 16 at age 59, built his data centers with low-cost components instead of expensive specialized hardware. He reimagined how they worked together to develop the concept of "the data center as a computer," which now underpins the web, mobile apps, and other internet services.

Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president of Google's infrastructure organization, says Barroso left an indelible imprint at the company whose contributions to the industry are countless. "We lost a beloved friend, colleague and respected leader," she writes in a statement on behalf of the company.

FrankOVD writes: Google is being sued by a widow who says her husband drowned in September 2022 after Google Maps directed him over a collapsed bridge in Hickory, North Carolina. Google failed to correct its map service despite warnings about the broken bridge two years before the accident, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday by Alicia Paxson in Wake County Superior Court. Philip Paxson "died tragically while driving home from his daughter's ninth birthday party, when he drove off of an unmarked, unbarricaded collapsed bridge in Hickory, North Carolina while following GPS directions," the complaint said.

The Snow Creek Bridge reportedly collapsed in 2013 and wasn't repaired. Barricades were typically in place but "were removed after being vandalized and were missing at the time of Paxson's wreck," according to The Charlotte Observer. The lawsuit has five defendants, including Google and its owner Alphabet. The other defendants are James Tarlton and two local business entities called Tarde, LLC and Hinckley Gauvain, LLC. Tarlton and the two businesses "owned, controlled, and/or were otherwise responsible for the land" containing the bridge, the lawsuit said.