Spotify is rolling out a new curation feature that will lessen the impact other playlists have on your recommendations.
It’s called Exclude from your Taste Profile, and according to the announcement, the aim is to make sure your own playlists aren't flooded with “songs and artists that don’t fit with [your] listening habits” or feel misplaced. For example, users can prevent their kids’ music from appearing on their heavy metal/trap Blend playlists if they have a family plan “or white noise dominating [their] Discover Weekly.” Doing so will tell Spotify which playlist should have its influence diminished; ultimately resulting in a more personalized experience for you.
Ground rules
Other reports of the feature reveal additional details not present in the initial announcement; all of which we were able to confirm thanks to a Spotify representative. Changes from Exclude from your Taste Profile are applied “retroactively” as it will prevent “past and future listening” of a playlist from affecting your own music. This means that even if you willingly listen to music from a playlist you don’t like, your recommendations won’t be influenced. But what will affect your Taste Profile are liked songs.
Spotify will take liked songs from excluded playlists “into consideration for future recommendations” for a person’s Discover Weekly or Blend collection. So be mindful of what you or other people in your family plan like on the platform otherwise those tracks will bleed over. Additionally, Exclude from your Taste Profile only applies to playlists – you cannot block individual albums or songs.
Availability
Exclude from your Taste Profile will be coming out to Spotify on Android, iOS, the desktop app, and the web browser version starting today. Be sure to keep an eye out for the update when it arrives on your device. To enable the feature, select the three dots at the top of a playlist, and in that menu, Exclude from your Taste Profile will appear. And if you ever change your mind, perform the same steps again to disable the feature.
2023’s shaping up to be an interesting year for Spotify as the update comes in the midst of a particularly quiet time for the platform. Several weeks ago the company announced it laid off about 600 employees similar to other big tech firms. And around that time, rumors began circulating that monthly membership costs will go from $9.99 to $10.99. Nothing’s confirmed of course, but given similar price hikes elsewhere, this worst-case scenario is sadly likely.
ChatGPT and Bing. Who knew they could be so good together?
Welcome to the AI wars. Not the kind we imagined where Skynet launched a surprise missile attack on its makers, but one in which companies are all vying to be the dominant source of your artificial intelligence connection. To put this powerful technology at your and everyone else's fingertips. And at the tip of this spear are, somewhat unexpectedly, Microsoft and Bing.
Here's the crazy thing, though. I've seen and tried Microsoft's new Bing search engine and its powerful chatbot, which Microsoft unveiled in a Redmond, Washington, event on Tuesday, and I think Microsoft may have just won the first skirmish of this crucial tech dominance battle. This could improbably be Bing's moment. And by "moment," I mean when you finally start realizing or caring that Microsoft has had a search engine of its own for well over a decade.
You might want to start using Bing. At least as soon as you can get access to the first iteration of Bing and its new chatbot, which I luckily have access to right now.
New look, new AI powers
The new Microsoft Bing search box. It accommodates 1,000 characters. The chatbot window can hold 2,000 characters.(Image credit: Future)
I know, Microsoft's announcement of a new Chatbot-enhanced search engine comes just 24 hours after Google unveiled its ChatGPT rival Bard and plans to reinvent its own much more popular search engine. But here's the difference. Google's Bard is coming soon. The new Bing is here now, and it works as you would want and expect an "Ask me anything" search engine to work.
In some ways, the new Bing looks a lot like the old Bing, but it's not. The desktop version, which is available now and will be followed by a mobile one, neither hides nor forces AI chat on you.
Obviously, the interface looks different. There's a new "Chat" option in the menu, and you can even slide between the main search screen and one devoted entirely to the chatbot. Back on the search screen, the query box is much larger, accommodating up to 1,000 characters for pretty much any natural language question you can cook up.
You can - and I did - type in virtually anything you want into that space. Microsoft says most people type on average 2.4 words in a search box, but that's operating within the parameters and confines of a typical search engine. To be clear, Microsoft is not reinventing the wheel here. Most people are already typing lengthy queries into Google Search and getting decent keyword-based results. However, the new Bing takes this thought a step further.
Ask it anything
You type in what you think. (Image credit: Future)
As we were typing in our various queries, which included a vanity search on moi and longer ones like asking about baking blueberry muffins for someone who's allergic to gluten and milk, Bing was collecting the standard fare like Wikipedia results on me and muffin recipes from various foodie sites. If you were to look at only the center of the screen, you could assume nothing has changed, but populating somewhat more slowly on the right is a new box full of more conversational results from Bing's chatbot.
The results are like its cousin ChatGPT but also not. Microsoft basically took OpenAI's work on ChatGPT and, with OpenAI's help, iterated on it, put the formidable power of Azure Cloud Services behind it, and combined it with Bing's knowledge graph to create what it's calling the Prometheus Model.
The Bing Chat integration with Microsoft Edge browser let you go beyond the information you find on the page to gather more sources and gain additional information and context.(Image credit: Future)
Going deeper and further
In each case, the chat result expanded on the results in more detail, and because it's conversational, that first result can be just the beginning of a longer conversation. On my vanity search, we got the details about my career but then asked the chatbot if I'd ever won any awards. It found the ones I did and the ones where I was runner-up (thanks for that reminder, new Bing).
At the bottom of that right-hand chat box result is a "Let's Chat" button that lets you deepen the query with additional questions.
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Want to plan a trip? You can get really detailed with the new Bing.(Image credit: Future)
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I presented Bing Chat with a difficult travel premise. It did its best to help me work through it. The chat feels like a concerned friend but with a vast amount of knowledge behind it.(Image credit: Future)
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I told Bing about my personal (fake) pain and workout concerns.(Image credit: Future)
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Bing chat cares(Image credit: Future)
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But it can't answer every question/(Image credit: Future)
On my baking question, I got details specifically about how to find ingredients that wouldn't bother my allergic friend. What's notable about some, but not all, of these results is how, unlike ChatGPT, every reference is cited in place. I only had to float over one to see the source or click through to visit the origin page.
In the chat screen, every result returns additional guiding questions to continue your search. When I launched a search about working out my quads without hurting my back (I lied and told Bing I injured it last summer), Bing responded by telling me how sorry it was that I hurt my back, adding "I hope you are feeling better now. 😊 Building your quads, or quadriceps femoris, can be challenging if you have back pain, but there are some exercises that can help you without hurting your back..." then suggested a long list of well-cited exercise options. The list was extensive and full of citations.
It's early days
With Bing's new chatbot most of the necessary citations are baked into the results.(Image credit: Future)
We have already seen some results, though, that don't include a reference, like one a colleague did on exercise options that was link free despite recommending a few different workout options. The concern here would be that the chatbot didn't even account for the possibility that the person searching can't handle those kinds of activities.
Still, it's early days for the new Bing and the whole point of AIs is that they learn (or can be trained), and get better and better. What's more, the system does have a mechanism for feedback so you can call out inaccurate responses. You do this by selecting dislike, but you can get more granular by adding some detail and a screenshot in a feedback window. I would like to see the ability to select the exact offending text, right-click, and select, "this is inaccurate." Maybe in a future version.
Even so, the beauty of what Microsoft has built here is the first fully-integrated Search AI. Not only is it elegant and useful (in the Microsoft Edge integration you can ask Bing Chat to summarize a page for you) but, as is often the case with the best new AI tools, it's also fun.
If Bing returns and inaccurate or unacceptable result, you can send Microsoft feedback.(Image credit: Future)
It's also doing what we probably always wanted search to do, guiding us to the best result. Google has arguably the most powerful and comprehensive knowledge graph, but an initial search won't necessarily bring back the results you want. So you recast your search. It's a series of stops and starts until you get to the best result. With the addition of Bing Chat, search becomes a funnel where additional context and questions can narrow the focus until you have the best result.
Granted there's concern about abuse, but because Microsoft built this on top of the already strong foundation of its often ignored search engine – the chat inherits Bing's gifts and ability to mitigate bad, old, false, and harmful information.
I'm certain it won't be foolproof because AI rarely is. Still, ChatGPT has been such a sensation not only because it's so powerful and easy to use, but because it's mostly managed to avoid surfacing the biases and poor judgment that's plagued so many of the previous chatbots.
Put another way, Microsoft combined a seasoned search engine with what might arguably be considered the best-in-class consumer AI, improved on both of them, and built something brand new that anyone can use without any training at all.
And they've done it before Google.
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The US Department of Transportation said on Thursday it is investigating Elon Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink over the potentially illegal movement of hazardous pathogens. A Department of Transportation spokesperson told Reuters about the probe after the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal-welfare advocacy group, wrote to Secretary o...
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A relatively obscure ransomware variant called Clop may stay that way for a bit longer, after it was discovered to have a Linux version that had a rather embarassing flaw.
The Linux version of the ransomware was first spotted in December 2022 by a SentinelLabs researcher named Antonis Terefos. His analysis determined that the Linux variant is almost identical to the Windows one, but with a few small (albeit crucial) differences.
Namely, Linux users were able to quietly decrypt all of the affected files and reclaim their endpoints - without having to pay the criminals anything.
Retrieving the master key
Among those differences is the fact that the Linux version “did not encrypt the RC4 keys used for file encryption with the RSA-based asymmetric algorithm used in the Windows variant.
Unlike the Windows version, the Linux one uses a hardcoded RC4 “master key” which generates encrypting keys, and then uses the same one to encrypt and store files, locally. When SentinelLabs figured it out, they used the flaw to freely retrieve the keys and reverse the encryption. The team has now built a Python script to help automate the process, which can be found on GitHub.
But that’s not the only major flaw this ransomware has. Apparently, the malware also writes extra data to the encrypted file, such as its size and encryption time. Usually, this type of data is obfuscated as it can help forensic analysts identify important documents. In this case, it wasn’t hidden at all.
All of this prompted the researchers to conclude that the Clop ransomware, at least in its current form, is unlikely to take off as a major threat. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it’s safe to assume that a new version is in the works and that it could be released soon.
Still, news like this is always good, especially for the victims:
"We shared our findings early with relevant law enforcement and intelligence partners and will continue to collaborate with the relevant organizations to affect the economics of the ransomware space in favor of defenders," SentinelLabs told BleepingComputer.
Five more banks will join the pilot on the central bank digital currency or e-rupee for retail customers and the project will be extended to nine additional cities, the Reserve Bank said on Wednesday. The Reserve Bank of India, which began piloting the central bank digital currency or e-rupee for retail customers in early December with eight banks in five cities, stre...
The latest Canalys data for global PC shipments is alarming, if not expected, with the final quarter of 2022 seeing a 21% decrease.
In 2022, the world’s tech companies shifted 434.5 million PCs, a figure that includes laptops, desktops, and tablets. This is down 13% from the 499.4 million that were sold in 2021, however there’s a positive figure lurking deep beneath the surface that’s especially interesting.
In a time where many of us are economizing, we’re becoming more reliant on our smartphones for on-the-go tasks, relying on a dedicated PC for when the work gets tough.
Tablet sales
Despite a large-scale slowdown, tablet sales grew in Q4 2022 (albeit just 1% year-on-year), and this is after three consecutive months of decline.
Apple continues to dominate this sector, accounting for 46% of tablet shipments. Its latest M-series iPad models are likely a key driver behind its recent success.
Other popular companies in the tablet sector included Samsung, Amazon, Lenovo, and Huawei, though I have a sneaking suspicion that Google may rank somewhere in the top five this time next year, once its rumored Pixel Tablet hits the shelves.
Canalys analyst, Himani Mukka, said: “Despite the decline from 2021, tablet shipment volumes in 2022 were well above pre-pandemic levels and opportunities for future growth remain intact”.
This could be thanks in part to the huge drive for digitalization in the education sector, especially in developing markets, which may favor the more affordable price points of tablets.
More broadly, Apple maintained its position as the number one seller of PCs globally, accounting for one in five devices sold. Meanwhile, Lenovo, HP, and Dell have all witnessed significant drops in sales, leading them and many other companies to consider cost-cutting measures like layoffs.
