To be able to afford something means more than just having the money that it costs. It also means having the requisite desire and perceived need to convince yourself its cost is commensurate with its value. When I say I can’t afford to take a $40 Uber home from the office but then spend $60 on Uber Eats when I get…
Hey Connectioneers, it’s time for the Sunday scramble! Puzzling can become a little obsessive for some people. Not “Disney adults dropping $400K large to get unbanned from a cultish sounding dinner club” obsessive, but a little crazy nonetheless.
Welcome to the weekend, puzzlers! There’s a rugged game of Connections waiting for you today. If you’re a foodie or a gamer, you’ll think you’ve got it all figured out, but then … Maybe not. Regardless, it’s a great wakeup call for your brain—much better than diving back into the wild debate about the pros and cons of…
Sam Altman has told OpenAI staff members during their weekly meeting that the company is changing its rather convoluted non-profit corporate structure next year, according to Fortune. The CEO said OpenAI will move away from being controlled by a non-profit entity and will transition into a more traditional for-profit organization. He didn't delve into the specifics of how the company will achieve that goal and what OpenAI's corporate structure will look like exactly. A spokesperson only told Fortune that it remains "focused on building AI that benefits everyone" and that non-profit is "core to [its] mission and will continue to exist."
OpenAI started as a non-profit organization in 2015 that relied on money from donors. In a page explaining its structure, it said that it only raised $130.5 million in total donations over the years, which it says made it clear that "donations alone would not scale with the cost of computational power and talent required to push [its] core research forward." The then-purely non-profit organization created a for-profit subsidiary in order to solve that problem. As Fortune explains, OpenAI's non-profit entity currently controls its for-profit arm, which in turn controls a holding company that takes investments from companies like Microsoft.
Under this structure, the profit that can be allocated to investors, including Microsoft, has a cap. Anything OpenAI makes beyond the cap will go to its non-profit division. And the company's revenue is booming, according to a report by The Information published in June. OpenAI reportedly doubled its annualized revenue in the first half of the year, thanks to the subscription version of ChatGPT.
The company's complex structure also allowed OpenAI's non-profit board of directors to oust Altman in 2023, because they "no longer [have] confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." Five days later, however, the board was disbanded and replaced, while Altman was reinstated as CEO.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/LQ8aiY0It used to go by at least two different names — Oculus Connect and then Facebook Connect — but whatever the moniker, Meta’s fall event is still a big showcase for the company’s latest and greatest achievements in the virtual reality and mixed reality space. Much like last year, we can likely predict the biggest news coming out of Meta Connect 2024 with just two acronyms: AI and AR.
Like every other big tech firm this year, Meta will be desperate to demonstrate how it plans to stay relevant in a future powered by AI. And now that we're seven months beyond the launch of Apple's Vision Pro, which arrived alongside a short-lived spike in interest in augmented reality (AR), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is likely eager to show off his own plans to make AR a reality.
While Zuckerberg isn't as hot on the metaverse as he was when he renamed his company, the union of AI and AR is one way he can still make the dream of persistent virtual worlds come true. It might look less like Ready Player One, but if AR glasses actually take off, they could still let Meta control another piece of our digital world. And to help get them there, delivering an updated inexpensive VR headset couldn’t hurt.
With all of that in mind, here are a few things we expect to see at Meta Connect 2024, which kicks off virtually on September 25 and runs for two days.
Orion AR glasses
After reportedly killing a pricey next-generation mixed reality headset, which was meant to compete with the Apple Vision Pro, Meta is instead focusing on a pair of augmented reality glasses, codenamed Orion, as its next innovation. As seen in the background of one Mark Zuckerberg photo (above) , and later somewhat confirmed by him, Orion resembles a pair of chunky hipster frames.
Unlike the Quest 3, which fully consumes your vision and uses cameras to show you a low-quality view of the world, Orion could let you see the real world like a normal pair of glasses. But, like Magic Leap and Microsoft's HoloLens before it, Meta’s glasses could layer holographic imagery on top of your reality. The key difference, of course, is that it appears to be far less cumbersome than those devices.
“The glasses are, I think, going to be a big deal,” Zuckerberg said in an interview on the Blueprint Podcast (via RoadtoVR). “We’re almost ready to start showing the prototype version of the full holographic glasses. We’re not going to be selling it broadly; we’re focused on building the full consumer version rather than selling the prototype.”
Back at Meta Connect 2022, Zuckerberg showed off how the company was thinking of AR glasses, together with an intriguing wrist-based controller:
"It’s probably our most exciting prototype that we’ve had to date," Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told The Verge last year. "I might get myself in trouble for saying this: I think it might be the most advanced piece of technology on the planet in its domain. In the domain of consumer electronics, it might be the most advanced thing that we’ve ever produced as a species."
According to a leaked Meta roadmap, the company plans to release a new pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses next year which would add a small built-in screen alongside its existing camera, speaker and microphone. That would be followed by Meta’s first pair of consumer AR glasses in 2027. It makes sense that we'll see some sort of concept device this year. Much like Apple’s Vision Pro was effectively that company’s version of an AR/VR concept car to introduce developers to its notion of "spatial computing," Meta will need to give developers a way to use its platform so they can build their own AR experiences.
A cheaper Quest 3 variant
Instead of an upgraded headset, all signs point to Meta releasing a stripped-down version of the Quest 3 called the Quest 3S, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Recent leaked images from Meta’s own Quest Link application has confirmed the headset’s existence. According to Gurman, the company is aiming to make it much cheaper than the current version, reportedly considering price points of $300 or $400, while still delivering an experience close to the Quest 3. It could potentially replace the Quest 2, which remains in the product line priced at $299 long after its 2020 release.
So why would Meta do this? There’s a huge performance gap between the Quest 3 and Quest 2, which makes life difficult for developers. With a cheaper device that’s similar to the Quest 3, potentially using the same processor, it would be easier to build games that can scale across two price points. According to Bloomberg’s Gurman, Meta has also considered releasing some models of the new headset without any bundled controllers, which would push the price down even further.
More AI, of course
Expect Meta to show off even more ways it’s taking advantage of AI across its Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban smart glasses. The company rolled out multi-modal AI search capabilities on those glasses in January, which allowed you to ask the Meta AI about objects or landmarks you were looking at, or for a quick translation. Based on our testing, though, those features were surprisingly half-baked.
Meta will likely discuss ways it’s improving those existing features by implementing its Llama 3.1 large language model (LLM), which it’s positioning as an open source competitor to Google and OpenAI’s LLMs. In particular, the company notes that Llama 3.1 offers dramatically improved translation, math and general knowledge capabilities. There’s certainly room for Meta to introduce new AI capabilities powered by Llama 3.1 in the Ray-Ban smart glasses, but given their limited processing power and battery life, we’ll probably have to wait for an updated model before we see anything truly groundbreaking.
Karissa Bell contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/UeW0CJoOpenAI has unveiled yet another artificial intelligence model. This one is called o1, and the company claims it can perform complex reasoning tasks more effectively than its predecessors. Apparently, o1 was trained to “spend more time thinking through problems before they respond.” According to the company: “[the models] learn to refine their thinking process, try different strategies and recognize their mistakes.”
That more considered response means it’s significantly slower at processing prompts than GPT-4o. And while it might be thinking more, o1 hasn’t solved the problem of hallucinations — a term for AI models making up information. OpenAI’s chief research officer Bob McGrew told The Verge, “We can’t say we solved hallucinations.”
— Mat Smith
The FixHub is a USB-C powered soldering iron designed to help fix whatever’s on your workbench (and be easily fixable itself). The iron includes a 55Wh battery pack, which acts as a stand and temperature control. Founder Kyle Wiens told Engadget FixHub was born of frustration with soldering irons and their limits. So his company tried to fix those.
Elgato has introduced the Stream Deck Studio, a new version of its creative control tech targeting professionals. This 19-inch rackmount console has 32 LCD keys and two rotary dials. Oh, and a $900 price tag.
A decade — and countless clones — later, the original Flappy Bird is coming back. If you don’t recall the 2014 hit mobile game, you’d tap the screen to flap the bird’s wings and squeeze it through gaps between pipes. The game debuted in May 2013, but it didn't blow up until the following January. Developer Dong Nguyen soon revealed the game was raking in $50,000 per day from advertising. He decided to remove the game, but clones of his creation persisted. Under the banner of the Flappy Bird Foundation, some dedicated fans acquired the rights to the game, officially, so now it’s flapping back.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/KRfQc6y
Much like terrifying alien births, creepy children are a horror movie staple. There’s something about the juxtaposition between their tiny innocence and their menacing actions that is very unsettling—whether they are possessed by something supernatural or just born that way.
