Google searches on removing Instagram and Threads accounts also rose in the wake of Mark Zuckerberg's announcement last week.

Parents and guardians seeking allies in ensuring children arent exposed to bad actors and harmful content are turning to social media platforms for help.

By Billy PerrigoJanuary 13, 2025 12:37 PM ESTThe Biden Administrations move on Jan. 13 to curb exports on the advanced computer chips used to power artificial intelligence (AI) arrived in the wake of two major events over the Christmas holidays that rattled the world of AI.First, OpenAI released its latest model, o3, which achieved an 88% on a set of difficult reasoning tests on which no AI system had previously scored above 5%. All intuition about AI capabilities will need to get updated in light of the results, said Francois Chollet, a former AI researcher at Google and a prominent skeptic of the argument that artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be achieved any time soon.Second, the Chinese company DeepSeek released an open-source AI model that outperformed any American open-source language model, including Metas Llama series. The achievement surprised many AI researchers and U.S. officials, who had believed China lagged behind in terms of AI capabilities. Somehow, DeepSeek had managed to create a world-class AI model in spite of a global embargo, led by the U.S. government, on the sale of advanced AI chips to China.Taken together, the two developments made something clear: I think AGI will probably get developed during this presidents term, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Bloomberg in January, meaning that technology powerful enough to carry out economically valuable work and make new scientific discoveries by itself would emerge in the next four years under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Whats more: China appeared to be catching up in the race to get there first.For some U.S. officials, those realizations only underlined what they had been arguing for years: restricting Chinas access to AI was now essential for U.S. national security. Whichever superpower achieves AGI first, the thinking goes, is likely to obtain a decisive strategic advantage, reap new scientific discoveries, wield powerful new weapons and surveillance technologies, and leave its competitors economy in the rear-view mirror.Under Biden, the U.S. government had intensified a policy that began during Trumps first term: using the power of export controls to limit the number of advanced chips that China could obtain to impede its attempts to reach parity with the U.S. on AI. Despite measures that made the export of advanced chips to China illegal in 2022, Beijing had nevertheless succeeded in stockpiling thousands of chips to build its own AI systems thanks to an international smuggling network. The pure power of DeepSeek v3 strongly suggested that those chips were being used to train AI at the cutting edge.And so, with just a week until Trumps return to the White House, the Biden Administration added finishing touches to its existing chip sanctions. The new rules attempt to make it even harder for China to obtain cutting-edge AI chips via smuggling, by establishing new quotas and license requirements for the sale of advanced chips to all but Americas closest allies.If the Trump Administration does not act to repeal the measure, the policy will take effect in 120 days. I think it is quite likely that the Trump Administration will find this policy appealing, and the reason is that we are in a critical moment in AI technology competition with China, says Greg Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank. Contrary to rumors of AIs progress reaching a plateau, OpenAIs o3 model shows new capabilities are continuing to emerge rapidly, Allen says, leading many in Washington and Silicon Valley to bring forward their predictions of when they think AGI will arrive. And while Trump himself is unpredictable, many of the aides and policymakers set to occupy senior positions in his Administration are China hawks. It matters a lot that the United States gets there before China, says Allen, who supports the Biden Administration's new rules. It is a pretty decisive move to make life much harder for Chinas AI ecosystem.Trump will face appeals from those urging him to repeal the new rules. Nvidia, which controls more than 90% of the U.S. AI chip industry, blasted the Biden Administration in a statement, arguing that the restrictions would hand market share to China. By attempting to rig market outcomes and stifle competition the lifeblood of innovation the Biden Administrations new rule threatens to squander Americas hard-won technological advantage, said the statement, authored by Nvidias president of government affairs Ned Finkle. The company also flattered Trump in the same statement, crediting him with laying the foundation for Americas current strength and success in AI.Allen agrees that they might push buyers toward China. But not fast enough, he says. It takes five to 10 years for a chipmaker to turn even huge investments into machines capable of making advanced new chips, and China simply doesnt have that time, assuming AGI is on the horizon. They are really stuck because they cannot get the advanced equipment that they need, Allen says. The alternative to American AI chips isnt Chinese AI chips. Its no AI chips.

A hot potato: The open-source project llama2.c is designed to run a lightweight version of the Llama 2 model entirely in C code. This "baby" Llama 2 model is inspired by llama.cpp, a project created to enable LLM inference across a wide range of hardware, from local devices to cloud-based platforms. These compact code experiments are now being leveraged to run AI technology on virtually any device with a chip, highlighting the growing accessibility and versatility of AI tools. After seeing Exo Labs run a large language model on an ancient Pentium II running Windows 98, developer Andrei David decided to take on an even more unconventional challenge. Dusting off his Xbox 360 console, he set out to force the nearly two-decade-old machine to load an AI model from Meta AI's Llama family of LLMs.David shared on X that he successfully ported llama2.c to Microsoft's 2005-era gaming console. However, the process wasn't without significant hurdles. The Xbox 360's PowerPC CPU is a big-endian architecture, which required extensive endianness conversion for both the model's configuration and weights. Additionally, he had to deal with substantial adjustments and optimizations to the original code to make it work on the aging hardware.Memory management posed yet another significant challenge. The 60MB llama2 model had to be carefully structured to fit within the Xbox 360's unified memory architecture, where the CPU and GPU share the same pool of RAM. According to David, the Xbox 360's memory architecture was remarkably forward-thinking for its time, foreshadowing the memory management techniques now standard in modern gaming consoles and APUs.After extensive coding and optimization, David successfully ran llama2 on his Xbox 360 using a simple prompt: "Sleep Joe said." Despite the llama2 model being just 700 lines of C code with no external dependencies, David noted that it can deliver "surprisingly" strong performance when tailored to a sufficiently narrow domain.David explained that working within the constraints of a limited platform like the Xbox 360 forces you to prioritize efficient memory usage above all else. In response, another X user suggested that the 512MB of memory on Microsoft's old console might be sufficient to run other small LLM implementations, such as smolLM, created by AI startup Hugging Face.The developer gladly accepted the challenge, so we will likely see additional LLM experiments on Xbox 360 in the not-so-distant future. // Related Stories

Numbers are the greatest weapon in the trailer for Prime Target, a new Apple TV+ conspiracy thriller starring Leo Woodall and Quintessa Swindell.Edward Brooks (Woodall) is a gifted mathematician searching for sequences in prime numbers. What if numbers didnt behave the way we assume? Edward tells his professor (David Morrissey). What Edward doesnt realize is that his work could be the foundation for a virtual key that opens every digital lock in the world. If this weapon gets into the wrong hands, it will lead to worldwide panic and chaos.Recommended VideosBecause his knowledge is extremely valuable, Edward becomes the target of many nefarious organizations. Enter Taylah Sanders (Swindell), an NSA agent sent to protect Edward. As the duo works together, they soon uncover a conspiracy threatening the worlds future.Please enable Javascript to view this contentI wanna fight back, Edward tells Taylah, who says, Lets burn them all to hell.Prime Target Official Trailer | Apple TV+Prime Targetsensemble includes Stephen Rea, Martha Plimpton, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Jason Flemyng, Harry Lloyd, Ali Suliman, Fra Fee, and Joseph Mydell.Prime Targetis created by Steve Thompson, who also serves as an executive producer with Ridley Scott, Ed Rubin, Beth Pattinson, Emma Broughton, Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Marina Brackenbury, David W. Zuker, and Laura Hastings-Smith. Executive producer Brady Hood directs all eight episodes.Prime Targetis not the only high-profile Apple TV+ drama premiering in January. SeveranceThe first two episodes ofPrime Targetstream globally on January 22, 2025, on Apple TV+. One episode will be released weekly every Wednesday through March 5.Editors Recommendations

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Tough road ahead Sonos CEO behind disastrous app exits with $1.9 million severance Frustrated users think Spence's removal is "well deserved." Scharon Harding Jan 13, 2025 12:29 pm | 42 A promotional image for Sonos' app. Credit: Sonos A promotional image for Sonos' app. Credit: Sonos Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAfter an app update rollout that can best be described as disastrous, Sonos is seeking a new CEO. The company announced today that Patrick Spence, who had been CEO for eight years, is stepping down.In its announcement, Sonos said its board of directors and Spence "agreed" on the decision while saying it was unrelated to the company's fiscal Q1 2025 earnings, which it will report next month.Spence joined Sonos as chief commercial officer in 2012 after leaving Blackberry. Under his tenure, Sonos branched into new categories, including portable speakers and spatial audio. But in May, Sonos issued an app update that broke basic and critical features. Sonos employees said the update was built on outdated code and infrastructure, impacting users' ability to do things like access and manage local libraries, set sleep timers, and edit song queues and playlists.The employees also said the app was rushed so that it could be ready in time for Sonos' first wireless headphones, Ace. In July, following much public backlash, Spence apologized and promised regular updates until the new app was as good as the old app. But even today, users are still reporting problems with the software.In August, Spence said Sonos would spend $20 million to $30 million "in the short term" to fix the app. Soon after, Sonos laid off 100 people. Sonos' stock price declined approximately 13 percent since the app update, Bloomberg noted. Sonos execs, including Spence, received a $72,000 bonus in 2023 but did not get bonusesfor the fiscal year that ended on September 30.Spence will receive a cash severance of $1,875,000, per SEC filings. He will also get $7,500 per month and serve as a Sonos board advisor until June, and his unvested shares will vest.Tom Conrad, who has been on Sonos' board since 2017, took the role of interim CEO today. Sonos plans on having a new CEO by February via the help of a third-party firm. In the meantime, Conrad will get $175,000 per month and receive $2.65 million in stock shares.Conrad was the CTO of Pandora for 10 years, the VP of product at Snapchat for two years, and the chief product officer at the failed Quibi streaming service. He has been heading work to fix the app with Nick Millington, Sonos' chief product officer and the architect behind the original app, Sonos spokesperson Erin Pategas told The Verge.Sonos let customers downLeadership succeeding Spence has their work cut out for them after Sonos tanked customer relations last year and frustrated employees who were concerned about pushing out the app."When [the app's user experience] doesnt work, our customers are taken out of the moment and are right to feel that weve let them down, Conrad said in an email to employees. I think well all agree that this year weve let far too many people down."In the letter (which you can read in its entirety at The Verge), Conrad pointed to "remarkable" product releases being brought down by the bad app. Such products are insufficient "when our customers alarms dont go off, their kids cant hear their playlist during breakfast, their surrounds dont fire, or they cant pause the music in time to answer the buzzing doorbell," Conrad wrote.Conrad and the following CEO will have to work to not only improve Sonos' value but to convince users that Sonos is equipped to handle their longstanding interests and demands as well as future endeavors. A big driver for Sonos' app problems was the need to evolve the software to support mobile devices, like the Ace. In August, Spence noted to investors that the maligned app was "a redesign of the entire systemnot only the app but also the player side of our system, as well as our cloud infrastructure."Interim CEO Conrad seems intent on appeasing disappointed customers and continuing to push Sonos toward a cloud-dependent future."Getting back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos, Conrad told employees, noting desires to push Sonos well beyond home audio.At least for now, customers seem pleased that Spence will no longer lead those efforts."Well deserved," a Reddit user wrote today in a post that has hundreds of upvotes as of this writing. "Imagine doing so much reputation and functional damage to a previous well regarded go-to brand.Scharon HardingSenior Technology ReporterScharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Toms Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 42 Comments

Laser beams in a physics laboratoryCallum Fraser / Alamy Stock PhotoA new way to gauge distance using lasers can measure lengths of more than 100 kilometres to within a thousandth of the width of a human hair, and could be used to make better space telescopes.In lab-settings, scientists can use lasers to measure distances with extreme precision, to within a few nanometres. But for longer distances of a kilometre or more, the precision of these techniques tends to be much lower, to within around a millimetre.

My husband has been teaching for 20 years. His salary is $19,000 above the poverty level for our family of seven. While money is tight, it's worth him keeping his job for our health insurance. For most of his career as a public school teacher, my husband's paycheck has hovered just above the poverty level for our family. This past summer, my children even qualified for the free lunch program through the schools.Today, with my husband's 20 years of teaching experience and a Masters degree, his pay is about $19,000 above the poverty level for a family of our size in our state. He has reached the top of the teaching pay scale at our school, which means his income will not increase after this year, but with five children, two of them teens and two on the brink, we are entering one of the most expensive phases of our lives.Although we have talked about my husband leaving teaching many, many times, the discussion always comes back to one sticking point: health insurance.Our health insurance is great We are extremely fortunate the teachers' union that my husband's school works with has always advocated for top-tier healthcare. Part of that is many teachers and teacher's families who have special health needs, but regardless of the catalyst, our family has always enjoyed what I feel is excellent health insurance. Our annual family deductible is $2,000, and we have a PPO, which means I've never had to deal with referrals or even prior authorization. I've never had to fight an insurance company, and we've never had a denial. There was a time in my life when we were first married and still in college when I used Medicaid for my pregnancy. I felt so ashamed every time I went to the doctor, although I was incredibly grateful that I never paid a dime during my pregnancy, and it allowed me to graduate from college as a nurse exactly one week before delivering my baby. Despite my shame in using Medicaid, the experience also opened our eyes to how important health insurance is because I had postpartum complications that led me to have two hospitalizations after giving birth. The statements were mailed to our house after I had recovered, and when I saw how high the statements were for those bills and then realized they had been fully covered, I wept in relief. At that time in our lives, as brand-new parents and new college graduates, a $20,000 hospital bill would have ruined our lives. Instead, we were able to start our adult lives fresh and immediately started working, paying back into the system that saved us.We don't have crippling medical billsWith those memories in hand and five children we are responsible for, we have always felt that any potential lower income as a public school teacher has been worth it for access to high-quality health insurance. We've been fortunate not to have any true medical emergencies, but even with seemingly "normal" medical events, like a premature baby and a weeklong NICU stay, we have still not experienced any of the crippling medical bills that haunt many American families. I do wish that teachers were paid just a little higher, especially considering how highly valued they were during the pandemic, but for us, health insurance alone has made it worth it.I don't know what will happen in the future, especially with education and healthcare, but I do hope that we can continue to prioritize the health insurance that has made our lives possible to this point because it provides us with a lot of peace of mind. But even more so, it might be nice to get to a point in society when employer-tied health insurance doesn't rule our decision-making.

Warzone's most beloved map, Verdansk, could be set for a return according to fresh leaks but fans of the battle royale could be waiting a fair while to play itTech17:05, 13 Jan 2025Updated 17:06, 13 Jan 2025Warzone remains popular, but it's a target for cheaters(Image: Activision)Call of Duty players will know all too well the magic of dropping into Verdansk for the first time when Warzone launched.It's hard to consider a global pandemic as halcyon days, but Warzone became the best place to catch up with friends and get some social interaction.Fans have long been asking when the map will come back, and as it turns out, it might be arriving in the new few seasons. Sadly, as we're not even at Season 2 yet, there's every chance players could drop before then.Longtime Call of Duty leaker TheGhostOfHope mentioned that Black Ops 6 and Warzone haven't seen any communication from Activision, and was challenged by one commenter to "leak Verdansk to wake them up."Content cannot be displayed without consentAnd leak it they have, responding with a simple '"S3", suggesting we're a season or so away from the return of the free-to-play Battle Royale's OG map.Reports had previously suggested a return to Verdansk was planned around the end of 2024, but it slipped to 2025, but Activision hasn't made any comment about the map's return in any official capacity.Here's hoping the company can squash the army of cheaters before it returns, or the whole thing could be a 'Verdansk squib' get it?Article continues belowThrowbacks are all the rage these days, with Fortnite adding its OG map, Overwatch adding a Classic mode, and Apex Legends going back to the beginning in recent months.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.RECOMMENDED