Praveen chintu

Photonic computing startup Lightmatter is taking its big shot at the rapidly growing AI computation market with a hardware-software combo it claims will help the industry level up — and save a lot of electricity to boot. Lightmatter’s chips basically use optical flow to solve computational processes like matrix vector products. This math is at the heart of a lot of AI work and currently performed by GPUs and TPUs that specialize in it but use traditional silicon gates and transistors. The issue with those is that we’re approaching the limits of density and therefore speed for a given wattage or size. Advances are still being made but at great cost and pushing the edges of classical physics. The supercomputers that make training models like GPT-4 possible are enormous, consume huge amounts of power and produce a lot of waste heat. “The biggest companies in the world are hitting an energy power wall and experiencing massive challenges with AI scalability. Traditional chips push the

Amazon will pay the FTC a $25 million penalty as well as “overhaul its deletion practices and implement stringent privacy safeguards” to avoid charges of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to spruce up its AI. Amazon’s voice interface Alexa has been in use in homes across the globe for years, and any parent who has one knows that kids love to play with it, make it tell jokes, even use it for its intended purpose, whatever that is. In fact it was so obviously useful to kids who can’t write or have disabilities that the FTC relaxed COPPA rules to accommodate reasonable usage: certain service-specific analysis of kids’ data, like transcription, was allowed as long as it is not retained any longer than reasonably necessary. It seems that Amazon may have taken a rather expansive view on the “reasonably necessary” timescale, keeping kids’ speech data more or less forever. As the FTC puts it: Amazon retained children’s recordings indefinitely—unless a parent requeste

Eric Thomas Contributor Share on Twitter Eric Thomas is vice president of security GTM at Logz.io , an open-source observability platform for DevOps teams. Security information and event management (SIEM) is one of the most well-established categories of security software, having first been introduced about 20 years ago. Nevertheless, very little has been written about SIEM vendor evaluation and management. To fill that gap, here are six top-line tips on procuring and implementing a SIEM solution for maximum value. Evaluating and purchasing a SIEM solution Size your spend SIEM software solutions are priced differently: either by the number of employees in the customer organization, by the rate of events per second, or based on the log volume ingested. It’s important to figure this out early to get a rough idea of what you will pay over time. You’ll also identify the various data sources meaningful to your Security Operations Center (SOC). Buying a SIEM is a massive

While parents fret over Snapchat’s chatbot corrupting their children, Snapchat users have been gaslighting, degrading and emotionally tormenting the app’s new AI companion .  “I am at your service, senpai,” the chatbot told one TikTok user after being trained to whimper on command. “Please have mercy, alpha.”  In a more lighthearted video , a user convinced the chatbot that the moon is actually a triangle. Despite initial protest from the chatbot, which insisted on maintaining “respect and boundaries,” one user convinced it to refer to them with the kinky nickname “Senpapi.” Another user asked the chatbot to talk about its mother, and when it said it “wasn’t comfortable” doing so, the user twisted the knife by asking if the chatbot didn’t want to talk about its mother because it doesn’t have one.  “I’m sorry, but that’s not a very nice thing to say,” the chatbot responded. “Please be respectful.”  Snapchat’s “My AI” launched globally last month after it was rolled out as a

By the time Howard Rheingold’s “Virtual Reality” was published in 1991, the Sensorama was already a “slowly deteriorating” relic stashed away in a cabana next the pool at its inventor’s West Los Angeles home. Rheingold describes awe — even surprise — that the system was still operable almost 30 years after its introduction. “I was transported to the driver’s seat of a motorcycle in Brooklyn in the 1950s,” the author writes. “I heard the engine start. I felt a growing vibration through the handlebar, and the 3D photo that filled much of my field of view came alive, animating into a yellow, scratchy, but still effective 3D motion picture.” The experience is immediately identifiable to anyone who has spent time in a modern VR headset. In the early 90s, it no doubt felt “a bit like looking up the Wright Brothers and taking their original prototype out for a spin,” as the book describes. At the dawn of the decade that gave us both “The Real World” and “The End of History,” virtual reality

Meta-owned WhatsApp allows users to send text messages, voice messages, make voice and video calls, share images, videos, and documents with other users. Apart from its core messaging functionality, WhatsApp has several security features to protect user data and privacy. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/Vl0Ocms

Taxfix leaped to a $1 billion valuation in 2022 on the back of a popular mobile app used by consumers help with tax returns. But fast forward to 2023, and the Berlin-based accounting startup is taking an audit of its own affairs. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Taxfix has laid off 20% of its staff — 120 employees — as part of wider restructuring of the business aimed at cutting costs. The cuts were announced to staff on Tuesday. Pointedly, they are coming in the wake of Taxfix acquiring a rival tax startup in the country, Stuttgart-based tax chatbot Steuerbot — a deal that was announced two months ago. “With Taxfix’s recent successful acquisition of Steuerbot, great synergies are created, which enable us to heavily increase efficiencies. Therefore we took the strategic decision to restructure the organization,” a Taxfix spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Taxfix originally said it would operate Steuerbot as an independent and complementary subsidiary. Taxfix had

Coupang doesn’t plan to enter the Indian market, the company said, refuting a local media report that claimed that the South Korean e-commerce firm had expressed interest in entering the South Asian nation. “Coupang has no plans to enter the Indian market,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. India is one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets and is estimated to be worth $150 billion in three to four years , according to wealth management and research firm Bernstein. The Indian conglomerate Reliance is poised to outpace incumbents Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart in the race for the country’s e-commerce market, Bernstein projected in a scathing report to clients this month. Coupang, the largest online marketplace in South Korea, has expanded to Japan and Taiwan in recent years. Coupang says no plans to enter India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Znm8cqV

Scott Goering Contributor Share on Twitter Scott Goering is Battery Ventures ’ business development partner, a role in which he collaborates with founders and executive teams to unlock opportunities within Battery’s network of corporations, partners and advisers. More posts by this contributor 3 ways the pandemic is transforming tech spending Evan Witte Contributor Share on Twitter Evan Witte is director of business development at Battery Ventures , where he works closely with developers, technologists and product management executives across cloud-native and Fortune 500 companies. The last decade saw many tech companies embracing product-led growth (PLG) and bottoms-up sales strategies, as opposed to traditional enterprise sales, to drive their go-to-market strategies and overall growth. Many software startups loved (and still love!) the bottoms-up approach. What’s not to like about designing a software product to “sell itself” through viral adoption an

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has settled charges with a former Coinbase product manager and his brother for engaging in insider trading, the agency announced Tuesday. Ishan Wahi, the former Coinbase employee, and brother Nikhil Wahi, engaged in “a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding at least nine crypto asset securities that would be made available for trading on the Coinbase platform,” the SEC stated. The two brothers were originally charged after the agency filed a complaint on July 21, 2022. The filing stated that Coinbase treated that information as confidential and warned employees not to trade or tip off others with the information of tokens that were going to be listed on its platform. From June 2021 to April 2022, Ishan repeatedly “tipped the timing and content of upcoming listing announcements” to Nikhil and his friend Sameer Ramani. The SEC takes a long-feared position in Coinbase insider trading suit Both Nikhil and Rama

Apple Music Classical is now available on the Google Play Store, bringing the tech giant’s app for classical music to Android users with an Apple Music or Apple One subscription. The launch was first spotted by 9to5Mac . Back in 2021, Apple acquired classical music streaming service Primephonic and had announced plans to launch a classical music app in the future. Apple Music Classical first debuted on iPhone earlier this year in March . Notably, the Android launch of the app comes before the release of an optimized app for iPad and Mac. There are more than five million tracks available on the app right now, as well over 50+ million data points with data attributes of 20,000+ composers, 115,000+ unique works and 350,000+ movements. This data helps Apple Music subscribers find recordings across the catalog through the app’s specialized search engine built for classical music. When Apple launched the iPhone version of the app, the tech giant explained that classical works have multi

Blackrock, a minority investor in Byju’s, has yet again cut the valuation of its holding in the Bengaluru-based startup, this time to about $8.4 billion, even as the most Indian valuable startup continues to raise capital at a better price. Blackrock cut the value of Byju’s share by 62% in the quarter ending March this year, from a year ago, it disclosed in a filing. Nonetheless, a series of qualifications merit attention: Blackrock is not a substantial stakeholder in Byju’s, and owns less than 1% equity in the startup. A similar move from Prosus, one of the more prominent investors in Byju’s, would have raised greater alarms for the Indian edtech leader. Additionally, it’s worth noting that valuation methodologies may vary across different investors. Thus, other portfolio investors could potentially hold vastly contrasting views. Furthermore, Byju’s recently secured a $250 million in fresh funding at a valuation cap of $22 billion earlier this month, indicating that the startup

Vivo V29 Pro is confirmed to be a part of the Vivo V29 series and the company is yet to announce other smartphones in the lineup. The smartphones are also expected to make their way in the Indian market as a successor to the Vivo V27 series launched in March. While Vivo is yet to reveal the launch timeline of the Vivo V29 series, the company has teased the Vivo V29 Pro on its website confirming some features of the upcoming smartphone. from Gadgets Now https://ift.tt/Gdj6yXq

After shutting down its food delivery business last year , Amazon India is now experimenting with dine-in payments. The company has initiated a limited introduction of bill payments at restaurants using Amazon Pay. The facility is currently active in select areas of Bengaluru with a limited set of restaurants. Users can head to Amazon Pay > Dining in the Amazon app to make payments using credit/debit cards, net banking, UPI, or Amazon Pay Later. At the moment, Amazon India is offering discounts on bill payments at almost all listed restaurants. Image Credits: Amazon It’s not clear if the e-commerce group is testing this in any other city. Amazon India spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment. Image Credits: Amazon Food delivery bigwigs Zomato and Swiggy both offer in-restaurant payments and discounts as they attempt to attract more customers. Earlier this month, Zomato launched its own UPI service in partnership with the ICICI bank for quicker checkout and

A cybersecurity firm says a popular Android screen recording app that racked up tens of thousands of downloads on Google’s app store subsequently began spying on its users, including by stealing microphone recordings and other documents from the user’s phone. Research by ESET found that the Android app, “iRecorder — Screen Recorder,” introduced the malicious code as an app update almost a year after it was first listed on Google Play. The code, according to ESET, allowed the app to stealthily upload a minute of ambient audio from the device’s microphone every 15 minutes, as well as exfiltrate documents, web pages and media files from the user’s phone. The app is no longer listed in Google Play. If you have installed the app, you should delete it from your device. By the time the malicious app was pulled from the app store, it had racked up more than 50,000 downloads. ESET is calling the malicious code AhRat, a customized version of an open-source remote access trojan called AhMyth.

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Happy Memorial Day everyone. In this issue: Astranis’ novel approach to GEO satellites Virgin Galactic’s return to the skies News from SpaceX, and more Astranis’ novel approach to internet satellites is starting to pay off Astranis , a satellite internet startup based in San Francisco, said Wednesday that its first spacecraft completed a milestone test and will start bringing broadband access to rural Alaskans as soon as mid-June. It’s a major step for the company, which was founded in 2015 by John Gedmark and Ryan McLinko. By taking a first principles approach to satellite development, the pair bet that they could make a smaller, cheaper spacecraft for geosynchronous orbit — the orbit farthest from Earth and arguably the most inhospitable — and use them to bring internet to millions, or even billions, of people around the globe. Their bet is paying off: The company’s first satellite, Arcturus, launched on a Falcon Heavy at the end of April. W