Month: January 2023

4 data science predictions for 2023

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Torsten Grabs Contributor Torsten Grabs is the director of product management at Snowflake overseeing its data engineering, data lake, data science workloads and the Snowpark developer experience. Data science has long been the domain of hardcore data professionals who understand the complex frameworks and languages involved, but those professionals are in notoriously short supply. Fortunately, … Read more

MeetKai launches new room-scanning tech and metaverse builder

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Not everyone believes that the metaverse — social, VR-centric worlds — has staying power. But MeetKai is among the steadfast optimists. Founded in 2018, the startup initially focused on conversational AI, aiming to build cutting-edge, top-of-the-line voice recognition and speech synthesis tech. It soon broadened its focus, introducing products to help developers build components of … Read more

Kensington announces two new trackballs at CES

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Kensington revealed the TB450 and TB550 trackballs at CES this year | Image: Kensington Trackball stans, rejoice! Kensington, one of the few remaining manufacturers of premium trackball mice, has announced two new options for the ergonomic diehards out there. Kensington introduced a pair of more budget-friendly options at CES 2023 with its new Pro Fit … Read more

CircleCI warns customers to rotate ‘any and all secrets’ after hack

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CircleCI, a company whose development products are popular with software engineers, has urged users to rotate their secrets following a breach of the company’s systems. The San Francisco-headquartered DevOps company said in an advisory published late Wednesday it is currently investigating the security incident — its most recent in recent years. “We wanted to make you aware … Read more

Watering the lawn may finally be getting smarter

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The Rachio Smart Hose Timer (pictured) can be directly connected to a faucet, allowing you to control and monitor your watering schedule via a free app. | Image: Rachio There are plenty of smart home gadgets being showcased at CES this year, but frankly, I’m most excited by the prospect of autonomous lawn care. Luckily for … Read more

Apple launches AI-powered book narrations

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At a time when there is a lot of debate going on around ChatGPT and generative AI potentially eating up jobs, Apple has launched AI-powered audio narration for select titles on Apple Books. On its website for authors, the company says that this feature will help independent authors who might not be able to convert … Read more

Amazon to cut 18,000 jobs as tech layoffs continue

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Amazon has announced that it will be “eliminating” more than 18,000 roles at the company, extending a previously-announced round of layoffs that was set to impact some 10,000 workers. The announcement is significant in terms of the number of people impacted, though it represents just 1.2% of Amazon’s 1.5 million global headcount. In a memo … Read more

New York City schools ban access to ChatGPT over fears of cheating and misinformation

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Schools have adapted to disruptive technology before — ChatGPT is the latest challenge to educational norms. | Photo by Nicolas Villalobos via Getty Images The New York City Department of Education has blocked access to ChatGPT on its networks and devices over fears the AI tool will harm students’ education. A spokesperson for the department, … Read more

Apple Books quietly launches AI-narrated audiobooks

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Apple’s website says digital narration makes audiobooks more widely available to authors. | Image: Apple Audiobooks narrated by a text-to-speech AI are now available via Apple’s Books service, in a move with potentially huge implications for the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry. Apple describes the new “digital narration” feature on its website as making “the creation … Read more