Microsoft is adding artificial intelligence capabilities from ChatGPT maker OpenAI to another of its products -- this time a customer-relationship app that's meant to help win revenue from Salesforce. From a report: Viva Sales, which connects Microsoft's Office and video conferencing programs with customer relations management software, will be able to generate email replies to clients using OpenAI's product for creating text. The AI tools, which include OpenAI's GPT 3.5 -- the system that is the basis for the ChatGPT chatbot -- will cull data from customer records and Office email software. That information will then be used to generate emails containing personalized text, pricing details and promotions. The Viva Sales app was initially released in October and works with Microsoft's Dynamics customer management program and that of rival Salesforce. It's free for users who sign up for the premium versions of Dynamics and $40 per user per month for Salesforce customers.

At Samsung's first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, the company unveiled its new Galaxy S23 devices: the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Here's what The Verge's Allison Johnson says about the most premium phone of the bunch, the Galaxy S23 Ultra: Compared to the outgoing model, it comes with an updated processor, a new 200-megapixel main camera sensor, and a tweak to the form factor. The built-in S Pen is still here, naturally. And thankfully the price hasn't inflated. In fact, the starting MSRP of $1,199.99 now comes with 256GB of storage -- double last year's base model. It's a little extra shine on what was already Samsung's star smartphone. [...]

The S23 Ultra also features a very slight exterior redesign. The long edges of the phone are slightly less curved, so there's more of a flat surface to grip when you're holding the device. The back panel and the screen also curve around the sides a bit less, so you might be less likely to run your S Pen off the edge of the device, which tended to happen with the more rounded design. [...] That's the short list of what's new. What's not new is basically everything else: a 5,000mAh battery, IP68 dust and water resistance, and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM depending on the configuration. Your color options this year are phantom black, lavender, green, and cream [...]. [T]he S23 Ultra is up for preorder today and starts shipping on February 17th. "Samsung's trio of flagships for 2023 offer some refined designs -- which look a little iPhone-like, if I'm being candid -- with some camera, battery, and processor improvements over last year's S22 generation," adds The Verge's Antonio G. Di Benedetto. You can view a full list of specs here.

Spotify packed on 10 million Premium customers in the last three months of 2022 to stand at 205 million, topping its previous guidance. Variety reports: The growth of its paid subs, up 14% year over year, was "aided by promotional intake and household plans," the company said. Overall, the streamer gained 33 million total monthly active users in the fourth quarter -- a record high -- to reach 489 million (free and paid), up 20% year over year. Amid signs of a flagging economy, Spotify posted 3.17 billion euros in revenue, up 18% from the year-earlier period an in-line with guidance, and a net loss of 270 million euros (versus a net loss of 39 million euros in Q4 2021). Operating loss of 231 million euros for Q4 was better than its projection of -300 million euros.

"We ended 2022 with strong Q4 performance as nearly all of our [key performance indicators] surpassed guidance," Spotify said in its quarterly shareholder deck. The company said revenue growth, excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates, was ahead of expectations. Meanwhile, Spotify's ad-supported revenue in Q4 grew 14% year over year, to 449 million euros, led by podcasting gains in the mid-30% range. The company's gross margin for the quarter was 25.3%, slightly above guidance "primarily as a result of lower-than-expected spend on new podcast content investments" as well as "broad-based music favorability." Spotify last week cut 6% of its headcount, laying off about 600 employees. On the earnings call Tuesday, CEO Daniel Ek admitted that he had "overinvested" in Spotify's business, requiring the company to cut jobs.

"I still believe it was the right call to invest, and I would do it again," the CEO said. "But things change, and the macro-environment has changed significantly in the last year. And in hindsight, I probably got a little carried away and overinvested relative to the uncertainty we saw shaping up in the market."

Strava, the activity tracking and social community platform used by more than 100 million people globally, has acquired Fatmap, a European company that's building a high-resolution 3D global map platform for the great outdoors. TechCrunch reports: Founded in 2009, Strava has emerged as one of the preeminent activity tracking services, proving particularly popular in the cycling and running fraternities which use the Strava app to plot routes, converse with fellow athletes, and record all their action for posterity via GPS. The company has increasingly been targeting hikers too, and last year it launched a new trail sports and routes option aimed at walkers, mountain bikers, and trail runners.

Fatmap, for its part, was founded a decade ago, with an initial focus on providing ski resorts with high-resolution digital maps. In the intervening years, the company has worked with various satellite and aerospace companies to bolster its platform with detailed maps incorporating summits, rivers, passes, paths, huts, and more, arming anyone venturing into mountainous terrain the information they need to know exactly what they'll encounter before they arrive. With 1.6 million registered users, Fatmap's mission, ultimately, is to be the Google Maps of the great outdoors, with a premium subscription ($30 / year) unlocking access to extra features such as downloadable maps and route planning in the mobile app.

The ultimate long-term goal for Strava is to integrate Fatmap's core platform into Strava itself, but that will be a resource-intensive endeavor that won't happen overnight. And that is why Strava is working to create a single sign-on (SSO) integration in the near-term, meaning that subscribers will be able to access the full Fatmap feature-set by logging into the Fatmap app with their Strava credentials. While Strava and Fatmap will remain separate products for now, Strava said that it will decide in the future whether Fatmap will live on as a standalone product once the technical integration has taken place. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, TechCrunch suggests the price of this deal "could comfortably be in the 9-digit range" given the $30 million Fatmap had raised in funding, "including a hitherto undisclosed $16.5 million round that it said it closed in early 2020."

"It's clear that the proprietary 3D mapping technology Fatmap had developed would have taken too much time and resources for Strava to replicate itself from scratch, which is why buying Fatmap outright likely made more sense in this instance," the report added.

Initially mentioned during their Innovation 2022 opening keynote by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, Intel has unveiled its highly anticipated 6 GHz out-of-the-box processor, the Core i9-13900KS. The Core i9-13900KS has 24-cores (8P+16E) within its hybrid architecture design of performance and efficiency cores, with the exact fundamental specifications of the Core i9-13900K, but with an impressive P-core turbo of up to 6 GHz. From a report: Based on Intel's Raptor Lake-S desktop series, Intel claims that the Core i9-13900KS is the first desktop processor to reach 6 GHz out of the box without overclocking. Available from today, the Core i9-13900KS has a slightly higher base TDP of 150 W (versus 125 on the 13900K), 36 MB of Intel's L3 smart cache, and is pre-binned through a unique selection process to ensure the Core i9-13900KS's special edition status for their highest level of frequency of 6 GHz in a desktop chip out of the box, without the need to overclock manually.

The Core i9-13900KS has been a long-awaited entrant to Intel's Raptor Lake-S for desktop series, with previous reports from Intel during their Innovation 2022 keynote that a 6 GHz out-of-the-box processor was on the horizon for this year. As Intel highlights, the Core i9-13900KS represents a significant milestone for desktop PCs, with its 6 GHz out-of-the-box P-Core turbo frequency. This makes it one of the fastest desktop x86 processors, at least from the perspective that users don't need to overclock anything to attain these ridiculous core frequencies. From Intel's sneak peek video on YouTube published on Jan 10th, the Core i9-13900KS looks to have reached 6 GHz on two of the eight performance (P) cores, with a clock speed of up to 5.6 GHz on the remaining six cores, which is very impressive.

One of the adjustments Intel needed to make to power limitations to achieve these frequencies is somewhat hazy. Intel hasn't specified if the Core i9-13900KS is a special binned part, but from previous KS launches, this has been the case, and it's expected that it is still the case. The reports of Core i9-13900K chips being overclocked to 6 GHz at ambient are few and far between, with only the best examples and those with very aggressive and premium ambient cooling solutions capable of this. [...] The Intel Core i9-13900KS is available to buy now at most retailers, with an MSRP of $699. This is $40 cheaper than the previous Core i9-12900KS ($739) that launched last year. Based on current MSRP pricing, the Core i9-13900KS is $110 more than the current Core i9-13900K.

Microsoft has revealed that a Premium cut of its Teams cloudy collaborationware suite will debut in early February, and some features that are currently included in Microsoft 365 will move to the new -- more costly -- product. From a report: As Microsoft's licensing guide clarifies: "some Teams features will move from Teams licenses to Teams Premium licenses." Those features are:
Live translated captions;
Timeline markers in Teams meeting recordings for when a user left or joined meetings;
Custom organization Together mode scenes;
Virtual Appointments - SMS notifications;
Virtual Appointments - Organizational analytics in the Teams admin center;
Virtual Appointments - Scheduled queue view.

OpenAI this week signaled it'll soon begin charging for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. From a report: In an announcement on the company's official Discord server, OpenAI said that it's "starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT" as one of the ways to "ensure [the tool's] long-term viability." The monetized version of ChatGPT will be called ChatGPT Professional, apparently. That's according to a waitlist link OpenAI posted in the Discord server, which asks a range of questions about payment preferences including "At what price (per month) would you consider ChatGPT to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?"

The waitlist also outlines ChatGPT Professional's benefits, which include no "blackout" (i.e. unavailability) windows, no throttling and an unlimited number of message with ChatGPT -- "at least 2x the regular daily limit." OpenAI says that those who fill out the waitlist form may be selected to pilot ChatGPT Professional, but that the program is in the experimental stages and won't be made widely available "at this time."

Four years after introducing its MicroLED technology at CES 2018, Samsung claims the technology is ready for the masses and "will set the standard for picture quality in 2023," reports Engadget. From the report: At CES 2023, the company announced it would offer 50-, 63-, 76-, 89-, 101-, 114- and 140-inch MicroLED models, greatly expanding the amount of choice consumers have when it comes to the new display technology. Samsung didn't provide pricing and availability information for the expanded line, but the company claims the new models are its most affordable MicroLED TVs to date. [...] The set sports a 240Hz variable refresh rate and 2-nanosecond response time. It also offers 20-bit black detail for "intense" contrast.

Samsung is also promising upgrades for its Neo QLED sets, starting with the line's new flagship. The QN900C features an 8K Quantum MiniLED-lit panel capable of maxing out at 4,000 nits of brightness. As with Samsung's 2022 Neo QLED sets, the QN900C features a 14-bit backlight. However, the TV offers even better contrast thanks to a tweak the company made to its 8K Real Depth Enhancer Pro software. Samsung is also promising improved picture quality when viewing older movies and TV shows thanks to the inclusion of its new Auto HDR Remastering algorithm, which can automatically apply HDR effects to standard dynamic range content.

For those who would prefer a 4K set, there's also the QN935C. Samsung's new 4K flagship features a redesigned power board that eliminates the need for an external connection box and allows for bezels that are less than 20mm thick. The QN935C also features top-firing speakers, allowing the set to produce Dolby Atmos sound without a dedicated soundbar. You can use both the QN900C and QN935C as a smart home hub thanks to the fact Samsung's entire 2023 Neo QLED line will feature built-in Zigbee and Matter Thread all-in-one modules. As for its OLED models, Samsung announced the 2023 QD-OLED TV line, which will offer up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and support 144Hz refresh rates -- all while being more energy efficient than before. "Additionally, the company has gone out of its way to get the panels AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certified," adds Engadget.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Scharon Harding: Like it or not, companies are set on making foldable PCs a thing. Asus' Zenbook 17 Fold OLED turned out to be one of 2022's most adventurous laptops, and Lenovo is planning its second foldable, the 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold for this spring. Assuming an operating system and apps that play well with the form factor, foldables excite multitaskers, workers, and creatives who can benefit from larger, yet still portable, display options, especially those who don't need a keyboard and touchpad at all times. But foldable PCs are very new and have their faults, from durability and compatibility concerns to the crease that can visibly run down the display's middle. Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i announced today at CES in Las Vegas aims to boost pixel count in a way that feels both more and less obvious: replacing the keyboard and touchpad with another laptop-size screen. It's the dual-screen PC for people who want all the pixels but none of the fold.

Lenovo's press release calls the Yoga Book 9i the 'first full-size dual screen OLED laptop' among vendors selling at least 1 million units a year. Targeting creative consumers who also want a machine with strong productivity that's also fit for entertainment, the laptop has two 13.3-inch OLED panels connected by the soundbar hinge that Lenovo has been using in its Yoga convertible lineup for a while. Each OLED screen has 2880x1800 pixels in a 16:10 aspect ratio. That's 255.36 pixels per inch (ppi) for each panel and 10,368,000 pixels total. That's 12.5 to 25 percent more total pixels than a 4K screen, depending on whether it's 16:9 or 16:10. Each screen runs at a 60 Hz refresh rate and claims a max brightness of 400 nits. Each screen's brightness is individually adjustable. Lenovo also claims 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and each screen supports Dolby Vision HDR.

The Yoga Book 9i will come with a physical Bluetooth keyboard that you can use detached from the system or magnetically docked to the bottom two-thirds of the lower screen. Alternatively, you can use a virtual keyboard on the southern screen. With a physical or virtual keyboard docked, you can use the remaining top third of that display for Windows widgets, such as the Weather, News, and Sticky Notes. But if you don't use Windows widgets, the area is kind of useless because you can't use it for anything else, like a shrunken window. With the virtual keyboard on display, I was also able to quickly bring up a virtual touchpad by sliding the virtual keyboard up with my fingers. If this touchpad works well, it's a clever inclusion for times that you want more traditional navigation but don't have a mouse on hand. [...] The Yoga Book 9i is designed for "users with large budgets seeking a premium system with a unique form factor that remains portable while providing more screen than the usual laptop," writes Harding in conclusion. The 2-in-1 will start at $2,100 and go on sale in June.

Qualcomm has announced that its new processors and modems will allow phones to communicate with the Iridium satellite network, letting users send and receive messages even in areas without cell coverage. The Verge reports: The feature, called Snapdragon Satellite, will be available in phones that have both Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and its X70 Modem system, along with some additional radios. Phones that support it should be "launched in select regions starting in the second half of 2023," according to the company's press release, and there are several manufacturers working on designs, according to Francesco Grilli, a Qualcomm spokesperson who helped conduct a briefing for journalists. For now, the feature will likely only be available in flagship Android phones, as Qualcomm's only including the tech in its premium chips. Companies that want to add it to their phones will work directly with Qualcomm to figure out the software and hardware, but they shouldn't have to build new relationships with Iridium, according to Grilli. To the satellites, phones with the tech will look like any other Iridium-enabled devices. As for who will pay for the messages, "the cost of the satellite-based messaging service and dependent services will depend on OEMs and service providers and how they choose to offer the service," according to Grilli.

At first, Snapdragon Satellite will be limited to use in emergency situations, letting you contact someone for help even if you're in a remote area without cell service. According to Grilli, "Snapdragon Satellite leverages Garmin Response." When you send an SOS, "response coordinators immediately see the customer's Latitude/Longitude in their proprietary mapping and response coordination software to determine the appropriate agency to coordinate the rescue." Qualcomm says that, eventually, it'll support "premium messaging," which will likely cost extra and will have to be implemented by OEMs, cell carriers, or other over-the-top service providers. So far, this isn't something Apple offers; you can only send texts via satellite using its SOS feature.

While Qualcomm says the emergency service will be free or very cheap, it hasn't provided details yet on how much it'll cost you if you just want to be able to text your friends from remote areas, like a hiking trail, ski lift, or even a boat in the middle of the ocean. Once that service becomes available, however, Qualcomm says you'll be able to use it with your regular phone number. (That likely won't be the case for emergency use, but it matters less there.) [...] While details are sparse on what it'll be like to actually send and receive satellite messages, it sounds like the experience will be similar to Apple's in that you'll have to follow instructions on your phone to point it toward a satellite. According to Grilli, your phone will be able to predict where Iridium's satellites are months in advance thanks to the way its constellation orbits the Earth. When you go to connect to one, it'll use GPS and other measurements to determine where you need to be facing...

Windows Central reports: The Surface Earbuds are a weird product in Microsoft's line of Surface devices. Now over two years old, and still available to buy at a close to launch price of $160, the Surface Earbuds might be the worst "Surface" branded device you can buy brand new right now. They launched at a time when the wireless earbuds space was heating up and offered less than the competition while charging more. Are they the best in audio quality? Definitely not. Are they the best designed? Most would argue that they aren't. Are they the most comfortable? That depends, but I know a lot of people claim they don't properly fit in their ears. Do they support wireless charging? Nope. Is the case premium? Mine scratches easily and the lid feels flimsy. Nothing about the product screams $160 premium earbuds.

[...] My sources have said that Microsoft was working on a successor to the Surface Earbuds, codenamed Ella, that was supposed to launch before the end of this year. We're now at the end of the year and that never happened. I hope they've simply been delayed and not canceled, though I wouldn't be surprised if they have. Microsoft's abandonment of the first Surface Earbuds should be a huge red flag for any potential buyers of a second-generation pair. Why should anyone buy them if Microsoft is going to abandon them the second they hit the market? This product segment is competitive, and there are many other brands that will commit to supporting their own wireless earbuds for longer.

Tesla Model Y became the best-selling car in all of Europe in November. It's for the second time, and not just for electric vehicles, but all cars. Electrek reports: According to data from Automotive News Europe, Tesla delivered nearly 20,000 Model Y vehicles in Europe last month: "Tesla sold 19,144 units of the premium midsize SUV, a gain of more than 260 percent on the same month last year. It was a big rebound for the electric model after it fell out of the top 50 in October, just one month after finishing as Europe's overall top-seller."

December is expected to be an even bigger month based on early data coming in. For example, Tesla has already delivered 5,000 Model Y vehicles in Norway alone in December. The Model Y's rise in popularity in Europe coincides with Tesla ramping-up Model Y production at Gigafactory Berlin. The automaker recently confirmed that the factory is now producing 3,000 Model Y vehicles per week. All those vehicles are for the European market, and Tesla also ships cars from Gigafactory Shanghai to Europe.

An anonymous reader shares a report: I reviewed a number of laptops in 2022 across consumer, workstation, gaming, business, Chromebook, and everywhere else. I touched all of the major brands. But I had a particular focus on ultraportables this year -- that is, thin and light devices that people buy to use, say, on their couch at home -- because, with Apple's MacBooks in such a dominant position, many eyes have been on their competitors on the Windows side. For many of these models, I found myself writing the same review over and over and over. They were generally good. They performed well. But their battery life was bad.

What these laptops had in common is that they were all powered by the Intel P-series. Without getting too into the weeds here, Intel processors have, in the past, included H-series processors -- powerful chips that you'll find in gaming laptops and workstations -- and U-series processors for thinner, lighter devices. (There was also a G-series, which was this whole other thing, for a couple of years.) But the Intel 12th Generation of mobile chips (that is, the batch of chips that Intel released this year) has a new letter: the P-series. The P-series is supposed to sit between the power-hungry H-series and the power-efficient U-series; the hope was that it would combine H-series power with U-series efficiency.

And then many -- a great many -- of this year's top ultraportable laptops got the P-series: big-screeners like the LG Gram 17; modular devices like the Framework Laptop; business notebooks like the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7; premium ultraportables like the Acer Swift 5, the Lenovo Yoga 9i, the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro, and the Dell XPS 13 Plus. The problem was that, in reality, the P-series was just a slightly less powerful H-series chip, which Intel had slapped an "ultraportable" label onto. It was identical to the H-series in core count and architecture, but it was supposed to draw slightly less power.

Satya Nadella keeps thinking bigger. Microsoft's chief executive has been buying new businesses at an impressive clip. Look for him to add Netflix to the list in 2023. Reuters reports: [...] The two companies are already closely aligned. Netflix chose Microsoft as its advertising partner for a new advertising-supported subscription service. Microsoft President Brad Smith also sits on the Netflix board. Part of the rationale for a deal is that Microsoft wants to offer a video-game streaming service over multiple devices. Netflix has its own big plans in gaming. In 2022, the company co-led by Reed Hastings snapped up developer Spry Fox, its sixth in-house studio. Becoming part of the Microsoft empire would supercharge those ambitions. A bundle with streaming TV and games together is not hard to fathom.

With a market value 13 times that of Netflix, as of early December, $1.8 trillion Microsoft can afford Netflix. A 30% premium would value the Netflix enterprise at nearly $190 billion. Significant cost savings would be hard to find, however. And after taxing the $8 billion of operating profit that analysts project for Netflix in 2024, the implied return on investment would only be half its 8% weighted average cost of capital, per Morningstar analysts. Nadella has defied such back-of-the-envelope financial logic before. And if nothing else, he has shown a willingness to be a bold dealmaker. On that basis, it's easy to believe Microsoft will set its sights on Netflix.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Audi is preparing to convert its entire network of global production factories to manufacture electric vehicles as it gears up to compete in the auto industry's future. ;...] Audi announced last year that its last combustion car would roll off the line in 2033 (if they are still around then), launching only electric vehicles from 2026. To better compete in the new EV era and ease the transition, Audi will convert all exiting existing production factories to build electric vehicles by 2029. Audi board member for production and logistics Gerd Walker said, "Step by step, we are bringing all our sites into the future" as the automaker prepares to go all in on electric vehicles.

In a press release Tuesday, Audi presented the "plan for the production of the future," including converting its network of global factories to produce purely electric vehicles. Walker added: "The path Audi is taking conserves resources and accelerates our transformation to a provider of sustainable premium mobility. Rather than building new facilities like some competitors, Audi will work to incorporate the flexibility these new state-of-the-art plants provide into its existing operations."

A primary focal point of Audi's production plan is to cut annual factory costs in half by 2033, aligning with when it plans to phase out combustion models. To do so, the company will continue to digitalize and streamline its manufacturing processes with solutions like Edge Cloud 4 Production. According to Audi, less expensive industrial PCs will result in lower IT costs with software updates and OS changes. To have the ability to respond to fluctuating consumer demand, Walker says: "We want to structure both product and production so we get the optimum benefit for our customers." He adds an example of building the new Audi Q6 e-tron on the same line as the A4 and A5 as it phases out its gas models.

A raft of lawsuits from the games industry seeks to crack down on cheating in some popular online games, arguing that making cheats for games and even using them might be illegal. From a report: Cheating is a scourge of many online games, inspiring increasingly bold legal counteroffensives by some of the companies who make them. Those lawsuits are largely aimed against makers of cheat software, but they don't let players who use the cheats fully off the hook.Cheat-makers "induce and enable individual Destiny 2 players to create an unauthorized and infringing derivative work each time they deploy the cheat software," states one lawsuit from Sony-owned Bungie Studios that's still winding its way through the courts.

The kinds of cheats in play aren't the ones old-school gamers might have applied by inputting a developer-programmed invincibility code. Rather, they involve premium cheats that let players see through walls to get an advantage in multiplayer combat games such as Destiny 2 or Call of Duty. Game companies, many of which are banning tens and hundreds of thousands of accounts, say cheating scares off honest players and is costly to fight. Bungie estimated in one suit that it spends "roughly $1,250,000 per year on its anti-cheating measures," not including legal costs.

Researchers at U.C. Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab have launched SkyPilot, an open source framework for running ML and Data Science batch jobs on any cloud, or multiple clouds, with a single cloud-agnostic interface. Datanami reports: SkyPilot uses an algorithm to determine which cloud zone or service provider is the most cost-effective for a given project. The program considers a workload's resource requirements (whether it needs CPUs, GPUs, or TPUs) and then automatically determines which locations (zone/region/cloud) have available compute resources to complete the job before sending it to the least expensive option to execute. The solution automates some of the more challenging aspects of running workloads on the cloud. SkyPilot's makers say the program can reliably provision a cluster with automatic failover to other locations if capacity or quota errors occur, it can sync user code and files from local or cloud buckets to the cluster, and it can manage job queueing and execution. The researchers claim this comes with substantially reduced costs, sometimes by more than 3x.

SkyPilot developer and postdoctoral researcher Zongheng Yang said in a blog post that the growing trend of multi-cloud and multi-region strategies led the team to build SkyPilot, calling it an "intercloud broker." He notes that organizations are strategically choosing a multi-cloud approach for higher reliability, avoiding cloud vendor lock-in, and stronger negotiation leverage, to name a few reasons. To save costs, SkyPilot leverages the large price differences between cloud providers for similar hardware resources. Yang gives the example of Nvidia A100 GPUs, and how Azure currently offers the cheapest A100 instances, but Google Cloud and AWS charge a premium of 8% and 20% for the same computing power. For CPUs, some price differences can be over 50%. [...]

The project has been under active development for over a year in Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab, according to Yang, and is being used by more than 10 organizations for use cases including GPU/TPU model training, distributed hyperparameter turning, and batch jobs on CPU spot instances. Yang says users are reporting benefits including reliable provisioning of GPU instances, queueing multiple jobs on a cluster, and concurrently running hundreds of hyperparameter trials.

An anonymous reader shares a report: According to a recent IDC forecast, the PC and tablet markets are expected to shrink. Shipments for tablets and PCs will decline almost 12% in 2022, the research firm reported, and are expected to decline further in 2023. But excess inventory is already forcing suppliers to heavily discount products and shift from the premium segment to more mid-range products, the analysts said. On the other hand, the report states that tablet and PC shipments will continue to remain above pre-pandemic levels. But uncertain economic conditions will threaten inventory and increase market saturation next year.

"The reality is that both PC and tablet makers will struggle in the coming months as not only are volumes expected to decline, but so will average selling prices," Jitesh Ubrani, IDC's research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers, said in a release. In October of this year, IDC reported that tablet shipments were down 8.8%, signaling the fifth straight quarter of the tablet market's decline. This market contraction followed two years of massive growth, which can be mostly attributed to economic factors.

Ivan Mehta, writing for TechCrunch: After putting unique usernames on the auction on the TON blockchain, Telegram is now putting anonymous numbers up for bidding. These numbers could be used to sign up for Telegram without needing any SIM card. Just like the username auction, you can buy these virtual numbers on Fragment, which is a site specially created for Telegram-related auctions. To buy a number, you will have to link your TON wallet (Tonkeeper) to the website. You can buy a random number for as low as 9 toncoins, which is equivalent to roughly $16.50 at the time of writing. Some of the premium virtual numbers -- such as +888-8-888 -- are selling for 31,500 toncoins (~$58,200). Notably, you can only use this number to sign up for Telegram. You can't use it to receive SMS or calls or use it to register for another service.

Telegram Premium has amassed over 1 million subscribers, less than six months after the popular instant messaging app launched the paid offering and began a serious effort to monetize the business. From a report: Pavel Durov shared the update on his Telegram channel Tuesday, calling the milestone "one of the most successful examples of a social media subscription plan ever launched." The subscription, however, still "represents just a fraction of Telegram's overall revenue," he shared in the same update, optimistically hoping that one day Premium will rake in just as much money as ads.