1. Samsung launching next-generation of folding flip phones, tablets and smartwatches – watch the keynote below!
One of the big smartphone launches everyone waits for each year is the latest and greatest from Samsung, with this the time of year we expect to see Samsung’s next-generation flip and folding phones, its new smartwatches and new tablets.
I’ve now updated this article with a link below the latest information, and below is the keynote that was broadcast yesterday, which I highly recommend watching!
Instead of in the US or elsewhere, Samsung held this particular Galaxy Unpacked event in Seoul, which is a first for the company, and a great demonstration of just how advanced South Korean technology truly has become.
You can see full details, pricing and availability of what was launched at my updated article here.
2. Apple launches latest updates for iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, HomePods, Apple TVs and more – it’s time to update once again as Apple fixes several bugs including two that are being actively exploited.
It’s important to note that you don’t need to be on the very latest versions of Apple’s operating systems to be eligible for updates. Those still on iOS and iPad OS 15 can upgrade to version 15.7.8, although the very latest version is 16.6.
MacOS updates are available for macOS 117.9 BigSur, macOS 12.6.8 Monterey and the latest macOS Ventura 13.5. Obviously the older operating system updates are for older devices that cannot run the very latest versions of the operating system or haven’t been updated, but where possible, please update the OS after making the necessary backups first.
3. Twitter changes its logo to a stylised X, with Elon Musk having purchased X.com even before he co-founded PayPal.
Must has also launched SpaceX, the Testa Model X, his new x.ai platform in development, he renamed Twitter’s company name to X Corp back in April, and it is known that Musk wants to create “X”, the everything app, or a so-called super app, like WeChat is in China.
He even named his most recent son X AE A12 (with the AE pronounced Ash apparently). So, what does this mean for Twitter, and what is supposed to be the new name for Tweets?
Musk says the new name for a Tweet is an X, and it doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue anywhere near as nicely.
People have been joking that Tweeters are now “Xtremists”, that every post is now X rated.
The new X logo was projected onto Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, with police being called to stop the complete removal of the Twitter logo from the building.
There are even claims that The Simpsons cartoon show predicted the X logo would be used, and while there are faked images that show the same stylised X being used today in that Simpsons episode from several years ago, the X style logo seen on an app on what looks like an iPhone appears to be a purposefully managed version of the iPhone’s Safari browser logo, which looks like the two hands of a compass, except doubled, which gives an X looking logo, but in no way predicting this move, no matter how much Internet users would love have seen The Simpsons predict this, too.
What does it all mean for Twitter, or rather, X, or X.com? In the short term, a stack of publicity, jokes and more, even though some say this is “extremely risky” and pointing to Twitter itself stating its revenue was down 50%.
We’ve seen Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone called Threads appear, and while it has grown to 115 million users, it does appear to have stalled a bit. Yesterday also saw Tim Tok introduce text only posts for the first time, and we recently had Trump’s Truth Social twitter clone launch globally, too, after having started life as a US-only service.
On Sunday, Musk tweeted: “Soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
On Monday, Twitter – or rather – X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a series of X posts: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.
“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.
“For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started.
“There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything. and I are looking forward to working with our teams and every single one of our partners to bring X to the world.”
4. A Business Insider article shows the prompts used to make sure that AI doesn’t make things up, so what are the prompts?
With generative AI prone to make things up, today’s AI tools can use their smarts to help you ensure the work they produce isn’t fictional. I’ve read that humans will have to become adept at asking the right questions, and will need to become “prompt engineers” to make sure they’re getting the best from their AI assistants – using AI by itself isn’t a guaranteed panacea, humans still need to be the ultimate editors to make sure things are right
In this case, the Business Insider journalist likes to use Google Bard, which is an Internet-connected AI, something the free ChatGPT app using the free GPT 3.5 isn’t.
It’s worth reading the article in full, which I have linked at TechAdvice.Life, but it’s really a case of “garbage in, garbage out” – the quality of what you ask determines the quality of the information you’ll receive.
In short, the AI is told the following things when asked to do things, and what you type is obviously determined by the task you’re trying to accomplish:
1) ‘Give me a list of the fundamental facts on which your response relied’
This way you’ll get a bullet-point list of facts that you can check, and Google Bard should also give you the source of the information it is replying with, so you can check.
2) You can ask the AI to ‘Base your answer on these facts’, and when you get a numbered list, you can ask for the response to referencing fact 3, or 4, or whatever it might be.
This way you can catch the AI making things up.
3) ‘Think step-by-step’
This is another way to check the thinking and look at the way the AI came up with its answers, which the journalist calls “chain of thought prompting”
4) ‘Rewrite with these changes in mind’
This is where you’ve been paying attention to the results you’ve been getting, and want to AI to make corrections based on the information you’ve gleaned to make sure things are correct, and just aren’t made up!
This also dovetails with the leaders of AI companies going to the White House last week to work on the following seven commitments (per the NYT):
Commitment 1: The companies commit to internal and external security testing of their A.I. systems before their release.
Commitment 2: The companies commit to sharing information across the industry and with governments, civil society and academia on managing A.I. risks.
Commitment 3: The companies commit to investing in cybersecurity and insider-threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights.
Commitment 4: The companies commit to facilitating third-party discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in their A.I. systems.
Commitment 5: The companies commit to developing robust technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when content is A.I. generated, such as a watermarking system.
Commitment 6: The companies commit to publicly reporting their A.I. systems’ capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use.
Commitment 7: The companies commit to prioritizing research on the societal risks that A.I. systems can pose, including on avoiding harmful bias and discrimination and protecting privacy.
5. OpenAI has launched an official ChatGPT app for Android, now available in the US, Brazil, India and Bangladesh, and now available to pre-register for in the Aussie and other global Google Play stores.
After launching an official ChatGPT in May, the OpenAI people have just launched an official ChatGPT app for Android devices. Users in the US, India, Brazil and Bangladesh can download it now.
This is important because it is easier than logging into the website, and avoids people being confused by other AI apps that are using the ChatGPT back-end, but can charge high monthly fees for either free access to ChatGPT 3.5, or high fees for ChatGPT 4.
Just as with the iOS app, you should be able to pay OpenAI directly for access to the more advanced GPT model.
If you want ChatGPT on your Android, and you’re in Australia, the UK, Canada, or elsewhere, then pre-register now.
6. Research to merge human brain cells with AI secures national defence funding at Monash University in Australia
This text from Monash University:
Monash University-led research into growing human brain cells onto silicon chips, with new continual learning capabilities to transform machine learning, has been awarded almost $600,000 AUD in the prestigious National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants Program.
The new research program, led by Associate Professor Adeel Razi, from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, in collaboration with Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs, involves growing around 800,000 brain cells living in a dish, which are then “taught” to perform goal-directed tasks. Last year the brain cells’ ability to perform a simple tennis-like computer game, Pong, received global attention for the team’s research – and this learning was done at a faster rate than AI alone.
According to Associate Professor Razi, the research program’s work using lab-grown brain cells embedded onto silicon chips, “merges the fields of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create programmable biological computing platforms,” he said.
“This new technology capability in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware.
“The outcomes of such research would have significant implications across multiple fields such as, but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery, giving Australia a significant strategic advantage.”
The project garnered funding from the prestigious Australian grant body because the new generation of applications of machine learning, such as self-driving cars and trucks, autonomous drones, delivery robots, intelligent hand-held and wearable devices, “will require a new type of machine intelligence that is able to learn throughout its lifetime,” Associate Professor Razi said.
This “continual lifelong learning” means machines can acquire new skills without compromising old ones, adapt to changes, and apply previously learned knowledge to new tasks—all while conserving limited resources such as computing power, memory and energy. Current AI cannot do this and suffers from “catastrophic forgetting”.
In contrast, brains excel at continual lifelong learning.
The project’s aim is to grow human brain cells in a laboratory dish, called the DishBrain system, to understand the various biological mechanisms that underlie lifelong continual learning.
“We will be using this grant to develop better AI machines that replicate the learning capacity of these biological neural networks. This will help us scale up the hardware and methods capacity to the point where they become a viable replacement for in silico computing,“ Associate Professor Razi said.
7. More work has been done to enable wireless charging at a distance, which could mean the ability to one day have very small or even no batteries in our technologies.
GizmoChina reports: Researchers at the Aalto University Research Group of Electromechanics say they’ve been able to enable wireless charging with 80% efficiency at a distance of 18 centimetres. It might not sound like much yet, but it’s an example of another company that has done this. Motorola showed off this tech a year or so before the pandemic, and it hasn’t yet been commercialised, but there are companies like Energous that have enabled price tags in supermarkets to not only be updated wirelessly, but also receive wireless power, too.
The researchers said: “We wanted to balance effectively transferring power with the radiation loss that always happens over longer distances,” said Nam Ha-Van, lead author of the study. “It turns out that when the currents in the loop antennas have equal amplitudes and opposite phases, we can cancel the radiation loss, thus boosting efficiency.”
Presumably this technology will one day mean wireless power can be beamed at very long distances, or via repeaters in the road for example. Batteries can then be much smaller, devices can be lighter, and while there will be questions on his this is all billed, no doubt that will be figured out.
There’s no commercialisation expected this decade, but it is in our future 🙂
8. Microsoft to launch world’s first pizza scented Xbox controllers to celebrate the launch of a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in limited edition giveaway
Paramount Pictures’ are launching a new movie called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” in August 2023, and the company i giving away a limited number of exclusive ooze green, pizza-scented Xbox Wireless Controllers obviously designed to “pair perfectly with game content that immerses fans in the Turtles’ latest adventures.”
Details are at my site, you will need to follow the Xbox Game Pass account on Twitter, retweet the official Xbox Game Pass sweepstakes tweet. No purchase is necessary and the sweepstakes close on August 13, 2023. Fans in New York City can join the celebration and check out in-person the pizza-scented controllers, load up on pizza and play on in the Xbox Gaming Lounge at the Microsoft Experience Center on Fifth Avenue from 4-7 pm ET on August 2, 2023.
9. Australia’s Competition and consumer commission, the ACCC, is warning Aussies of new scams targeting customers of loyalty points, and if they’re running such scams in Australia, they’re running them in the US, UK and all over the world, too.
Full details at the ACCC here.
10. Security company McAfee warns of Barbie movie scams.
Amidst the peak of the Barbie movie craze, researchers from online protection company, McAfee have discovered a slew of new online scams as cybercriminals look to cash in on the summer blockbuster. Following a record-breaking opening weekend, McAfee is encouraging caution as consumers search Barbie-related Items online and may be more vulnerable to falling for a scam.
Cybercriminals are hoping to bait consumers with a rash of new scams that have cropped up online, including downloads of the film that install malware and Barbie-related viruses that point people to free tickets, but install data-stealing spyware instead.
Sharing personal and financial information with these scam sites leads to identity theft and fraud. Scammers might commit these follow-on crimes themselves, and they might post the stolen information for resale on dark web marketplaces as well—all of which puts movie fans at risk.
“Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for opportunities to make phishing and other scams more attractive and believable,” said Steve Grobman, Chief Technology Officer at online protection company, McAfee, “They often leverage popular and well-publicized events such as movie premieres, concerts, or sporting events to trick users into clicking on malicious links.”
6% of scams in Australia: Barbie-related malware is on the rise
In just the last three weeks, McAfee has seen a hundred new instances of malware that have Barbie-related filenames. While the majority are in the United States (37%), we’re also seeing instances worldwide with 6% in Australia, 5% in both the UK and India, and 3% in France, Japan, and Ireland.
Fake videos leading Barbie-branded attacks
McAfee researchers also discovered several fake and malicious videos that tempt consumers with Barbie tickets by downloading a file that is in fact loaded with malware. This malware known as “Redline Stealer” then siphons personal information, login details, and more from devices.
Fake Barbie Movie Download Scam
McAfee researchers have also discovered several examples of malicious campaigns that attempt to trick victims into downloading the “Barbie” movie in different languages. By clicking the link, it prompts victims to download a .zip file, one which is packed with malware.
The prevalence of these scams once again shows how attackers have latched onto the movie’s hype, hoping people will click the malicious files because the Barbie name is trending.
Even while the Barbie and Oppenheimer films churn up hot, new hype, the online scams linked to them are old hat. You can avoid these “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” scams by looking out for several telltale signs and by putting a few simple security measures in place.
McAfee shares top tips to stay safe
- Stick with trusted retailers and streamers.Keeping your shopping and viewing to known, reputable brands remain your safest bet online. Moreover, trusted streamers will only carry shows and events that they have the rights to. If you find an offer to stream something that’s heavily discounted, free, or not available on known media outlets, it’s likely a scam. At the very least, it might be pirated content, which could carry malware threats along with it.
- Purchase tickets from the theater chain or a reputable ticketing app. Another way scammers like to cash in on a hot ticket is to open a bogus online box office that charges for tickets. Of course, they won’t deliver. They’ll simply take your money and your card number to boot. You can avoid this by purchasing your tickets online directly from the theater or with a reputable online movie ticketing app that you can find in Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
- Watch out for shoddy-looking sites. Online scammers have various levels of sophistication when it comes to building and designing scam sites. Some can look quite legitimate, yet others look rather slapped together. In either case, keep a sharp eye out for poor web design, typos, and grammatical errors, however small. These often indicate a scam site, as reputable companies make every effort to provide a clean and professional-looking experience.
- View offers, promos, and giveaways with a critical eye. With big media, events come big marketing efforts, and scammers will do their best to blend in with them. A quick way to sniff out a scam is to take a close look at the promotion. If it asks you to provide your bank or card information to qualify, count on it being a scam. Put simply, steer clear of promotions that ask for something in return, particularly if it’s your money or personal information.
- Get online protection. Comprehensive online protection software will defend against the latest virus, malware, spyware, and ransomware attacks. Plus, it further protects your privacy and identity. Specific to the “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” scams floating around, online protection can help prevent you from clicking links to known or suspected malicious sites. In addition, it offers strong password protection by generating and automatically storing complex passwords to keep your credentials safer from hackers and crooks who might try to force their way into your accounts.
