Category: News

ShinyShiny snippets: Microsoft to face possible EU Antitrust warning over Activision deal

Microsoft (MSFT.O) is likely to receive an EU antitrust warning about its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI.O), people familiar with the matter said, that could pose another challenge to completing the deal. The European Commission is readying a charge sheet known as a statement of objections setting out its concerns about…

ShinyShiny snippets: Apple Watch guilty of infringing Masimo patent

Apple infringed on one of medical technology company Masimo's pulse oximeter patents when it launched Apple Watch models that use light sensors to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood, an International Trade Commission (ITC) judge ruled on Tuesday. Masimo, which designs pulse oximetry devices, has been embroiled in an ongoing battle with Apple…

ShinyShiny snippets: Microsoft AI can replicate human voice after 3 seconds

Microsoft has unveiled an AI voice simulator capable of accurately imitating a person’s voice after listening to them speak for just three seconds. The VALL-E language model was trained using 60,000 hours of English speech from 7,000 different speakers in order to synthesize “high-quality personalised speech” from any unseen speaker. Once the artificial intelligence system has…

ShinyShiny snippets: Mastodon users fall by 30% since peak

The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted on its website. There were about 1.8 million active users in the first week of January, down from over 2.5 million in early December. Mastodon, an…

ShinyShiny snippets: Apple Books launches AI-narrated audiobooks

Apple has launched a raft of audiobooks narrated by artificial intelligence to its Apple Books platform, but maintains it “remains committed to celebrating and showcasing the magic of human narration”. According to The Guardian, which said the tech giant had “quietly” uploaded the text-to-speech content in “an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook…

ShinyShiny snippets: VW ID.7 EV comes to CES in Las Vegas

The roll-out of Volkswagen's ID family of models continues with this, the VW ID.7 electric saloon, which has been shown off at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The German firm has pulled the covers off its Tesla Model 3 rival and confirmed the ID.7 name, but has stopped short of revealing the vehicle's full design; we'll…

ShinyShiny snippets: Tesla delivered record number of EVs in 2022

Electric car maker Tesla says it delivered a record 1.3m vehicles last year, 40% more than in 2021. It comes after the company delivered more than 405,000 vehicles in the last three months of 2022. However, that figure missed Wall Street forecasts of around 430,000 deliveries for the period. This year the motor industry is…

ShinyShiny snippets: Sales of AR and VR headsets tumble, data shows

Worldwide shipments of virtual and augmented reality headsets dropped 12% to 9.6 million this year according to data from CCS Insight - a problem for Meta and other tech companies that are invested in the digital worlds' potential. VR headset sales in the U.S. also slumped 2% from a year earlier to $1.1 billion as of…

ShinyShiny snippets: Tesla in California crash was in full self-driving mode

The driver of a 2021 Tesla Model S told California authorities the vehicle was in “full self-driving mode” when the technology malfunctioned, causing an eight-vehicle crash on the San Francisco Bay bridge last month. The crash on Thanksgiving Day resulted in two juveniles being transported to hospital and led to lengthy delays on the bridge. The…