Latest Tech News

Intel Sapphire Rapids chips are now officially set to be coming to workstations, the company has confirmed.

Pencilled in for release at some point in 2023, "Sapphire Rapids" is the code name for the latest and greatest iteration of Intel's CPUs, which are otherwise known as 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

The chip giant says the move will give workstation users greater processing speeds than ever before, a promotional video claiming "it used to take a whole room full of computers to do what this is doing on its own, there go my 30-minute rendering coffee breaks".

So, what do we actually know?

Despite the scale of the news, Intel did not officially reveal very much about what the specs of the new Sapphire Rapids-powered workstations could be.

Unofficially, however, the new workstation CPUs could boast overclockable CPUs with up to 56 cores, eight memory channels, and 112 PCIe lanes, according to data from hardware leaker Enthusiastic Citizen reported by Tom's Hardware. 

Intel didn't provide a timeline for the rollout will take place, which might be just as well, as Sapphire Rapids has been beset by several significant delays already.

The new products line-up had originally been set for late 2021, before a series of delays, some of which related to pandemic-related disruptions, kept pushing the release date back. 

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But it's not just workstations that are set to be superpowered by the upcoming Sapphire Rapids technology, high performance computing is also set to get a nod.

According to a press release by the chip giant, Sapphire Rapids will soon be used to power supercomputers, including the Argonne National Laboratory’s Aurora.

The machine is set to be powered by the Xeon Max CPU, an x86-based processor, which is Intel’s highest-density processor and reportedly packs in over 100 billion transistors into a 47-tile package with up to 128 gigabytes (GB) of high-bandwidth memory. 

• Interested in getting improved performance without opting for a workstation? Check out if any of our best business laptops fit the bill.

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Latest Tech News

AI-generated art is a controversial topic, to say the least, as some reject it while others embrace it. Adobe is now on the latter side as it will begin accepting “illustrations made using generative AI” on its Stock platform – with some stipulations.

Looking through the announcement, it appears Adobe sees this move as the best middle-ground approach. The company understands people have concerns over AI-generated art, but recognizes that technology is going to be used regardless of any ethical concerns. Adobe expects contributors to use AI as a way to “diversity their portfolios, expand their creativity, and increase their earning potential.” Accompanying the adoption, Adobe is updating its Stock contributor guidelines around the core belief of providing full transparency to future buyers of AI art.

Adobe's new rules

First off, all generated AI content must be properly labeled as such and that includes images that look like photographs. Only pictures taken by a physical camera can be submitted to Adobe as actual photos. Contributors must tag their submissions as “Generative AI” as well as specify that it’s both “fictitious and generated.” Adobe doesn’t want users to tag submissions with “inaccurate descriptors”, like saying an image is a 3D render when it’s not, or claiming the people being depicted are real. 

You also can’t submit anything showing real locations, "identifiable property [like a company logo], or notable people…” regardless if it’s photorealistic or a caricature. Content that is based on or depicts “an identifiable person requires a model release” meaning you will need permission and the rights to use someone’s likeness. Images must also be high-quality; nothing nightmarish. 

When it comes to image rights, some platforms, like Getty Images, have banned AI illustrations over potential copyright problems. Adobe, on the other hand, is taking a crack at it. It appears users are being asked to familiarize themselves with an AI tool’s terms and conditions when it comes to licensing AI-generated content. If the tool’s developers don’t want people to license creations for commercial use, you can’t submit them. Royalties earned on generated AI images are the same as other Stock content, according to Adobe.

On the surface, it appears Adobe won’t be asking for proof of copyright. We asked Adobe if there’s going to be any moderation for licensing or if it’s all done on the honor system. We'll update this story if Adobe responds.

The future of art?

Needless to say, a lot of artists across the internet have issues with technology like this. Many fear losing income as people flock to freely-available AI engines to generate art. It may have the unfortunate side effect of snuffing out that artistic spark in amateur artists. Adobe remains positive in its announcement by implying this is simply a new avenue. 

This decision will certainly be an interesting experiment, especially when it comes to copyright. Getty Images may have banned AI images on its platform because of potential copyright problems, Shutterstock thought it would be best to team up with developers like DALL-E parent OpenAI.

It’s not just the art world seeing AIs getting better, as a new writing AI called ChatGPT has hit the streets. We tried out ChatGPT and the results are certainly interesting. 

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Google has introduced "continuous scrolling" for the desktop version of its search results for some users.

This means that when users reach the bottom of a search results page, they will now be able to see the equivalent of up to six pages of results before they get presented with a "More" button. 

The move follows Google's introduction of the feature for mobile versions of its search engine in October 2022, though search results were capped at four pages for these versions. 

Why the move? 

This brings Google's search offering more in line with what's on offer from many popular social media apps such as Instagram and Facebook for example, which let users scroll down continuously for a long time before asking them to load up a new page. 

Adding some context to the update, Google has said in a previous blog that "most people who want additional information tend to browse up to four pages of search results".

Google did not mention when the feature is set to be rolled out internationally. 

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This is unlikely to be the last time we see significant search engine updates from Google in the near future.

The search giant recently set out ambitious plans to overhaul the formatting of its search engine. Talking to the press including TechRadar Pro at its Google Search On event, Google’s VP of Engineering, Rajan Patel outlined plans that would see video and picture results integrated more closely into search results. 

The exec said the plans will help “organize results to better reflect the way people explore topics".

• Interested in improving your company's ranking on Google? Check out our guide to the best SEO tools

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Latest Tech News

Meta has been hit with a lawsuit for allegedly infringing upon users' right to privacy by collecting data from users of popular third-party tax software.

The filing relates to recent allegations that online tax software tools such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer used the company's "Meta Pixel", a piece of javascript code, to send information such as names, email addresses, income information, student loan data, and refund amounts back to Meta.

This would have then been used by the tech giant to produce custom, targeted ads based on the data on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Meta claims

The lawsuit, which was filed on December 1, concerns users using H&R Block.

The filing claims that even though users "expressly declined" to have their data shared with Meta, the company collected it anyway.

Though the plaintiff's filing did acknowledge that Meta required businesses to have a "lawful right to collect, use, and share" users' data, it went on to claim that did not honor this, instead relying “on a broken honor system that has resulted in repeated, documented violations of Meta’s own contractual promises and state and federal law".

Despite the alleged misconduct on the part of the tech giant, current users of the aforementioned pieces of tax software should have nothing whatsoever to worry about. 

According to The Markup, all the aforementioned tax platforms have already either removed Pixel entirely or changed its setting so as to not gather any additional financial information from users. 

It's important to note that the tax services themselves were not listed as defendants in the filing, placing all the alleged wrongdoing on the part of Meta.

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Meta is certainly no stranger to legal disputes.

The company was hit with a €265 million data protection fine from the Irish Data Protection Commission over claims the firm failed to protect the personal data of half a billion users, bringing its total EU fines to date to well over €1 billion.

• Want to ensure your data doesn't fall into the wrong hands? Check out our guide to the best privacy tools.

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Latest Tech News

Cybercriminals are releasing hundreds of thousands of new malware strains every day, with a huge proportion exclusively targeting Windows users, a new report has claimed.

Researchers from Atlas VPN using statistics published by AV-TEST GmbH concluded that in the first three quarters of 2022, there had been a total of 62.29 million new malware sample detections, or roughly 228,164 new variants every day.

Of that number, 59.58 million new malware samples were designed to target the Windows operating system, which amounts to 95.6%. Linux malware took up second place (1.76 million samples/2.8%), while the top three rounded off with Android.

Most popular OS

According to Atlas VPN, the mobile OS has seen 938,379 new threats between Q1 and Q2 2022, or 1.5% - and for macOS, researchers found 8,329 never before seen variants. 

The key reason why cybercriminals are so focused on Windows is its popularity, researchers claim. Microsoft’s operating system is by far the most dominant desktop product out there, holding roughly 30% of the global market share. According to Statcounter’s global stats, Android holds 43.47% of the market share, iOS 17.25%, and Linux 1.08%.

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Despite the horrid stats, the outlook is not as grim as it may seem. The researchers are saying that compared to the same period last year, the number of new malware strains has actually declined significantly - by more than a third (34%). 

Of all the different variants, ransomware remains the most destructive, and thus the most popular. Other popular variants include infostealers (capable of stealing stored passwords, credit card information, key strokes and screenshots), cryptocurrency miners (also known as cryptojackers) and bots (using the compromised endpoints to launch distributed denial of service attacks, which could be sold as a service).

• Check out the best endpoint protection services around

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Latest Tech News

Half a dozen Android apps, pretending to be utility services, have been scamming users and earning the developers advertising revenue, cybersecurity researchers have claimed.

The apps have managed to fool quite a number of people, having apparently been downloaded more than two million times.

Google has since removed all of them from the Play Store, but users are still being warned to be on their guard.

Malicious Android apps

The Dr. Web antivirus team discovered a total of five apps whose only goal is to trick people into downloading them and then serve them ads for as long as possible. The biggest one, with more than a million downloads, is TubeBox.

TubeBox promises users a cut of the advertising revenue if they sit and watch ads in the app. However, the whole thing is a trick, as when the user tries to redeem the rewards, they’ll conveniently run into different bugs and errors. Even those who somehow manage to work around all of the bugs will simply not get any funds.

Other discovered apps are “Bluetooth device auto connect”, with a million downloads, “Bluetooth & Wi-Fi & USB driver”, with 100,000 downloads, “Volume, Music Equalizer” with 50,000 downloads, and “Fast Cleaner & Cooling Master”, with some 500 downloads.

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The apps don’t serve just any ads - a Firebase Cloud Messaging account serves as a C2 server and instructs the apps which websites to load.

Some apps, such as the “Fast Cleaner & Cooling Master”, could also be used as a proxy server, the researchers found. With a proxy, the threat actors could channel their traffic through the infected endpoint.

Just because an app sits on the Google Play Store, does not make it secure by default. Although Google’s defense mechanisms are formidable, threat actors are always looking for new ways to squeeze fraudulent apps into the popular app repository, and succeed every now and then. To protect against such apps, always make sure to read through the reviews, as other users could be warning about the fraud, as well.

• Here's our list of the best firewalls right now

Via: BleepingComputer

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