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Apple expands in Microsoft’s backyard

February 24, 2017March 3, 2017

Apple is growing its team in Seattle by creating a new hub for artificial intelligence research reports CNBC. Apple’s expansion will also bolster a relationship with researchers at the University of Washington, which on Thursday announced a $1 million endowment named after Carlos Guestrin, a member of the machine learning team at firm. In a statement, Guestrin noted the “amazing talent” that comes out of the university — who have plenty of options, with Amazon and Microsoft headquartered nearby. Luring top artificial intelligence researchers to big companies has become so…

Intel promises gigabit speeds with new LTE modem for phones

February 22, 2017March 3, 2017 Staff Writer

Intel is announcing a new modem, under the catchy name “XMM 7560,” that includes support for download speeds up to 1 Gbps and upload speeds up to 225 Mbps. The modem is supposed to be suitable for smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile devices. The Intel modem is supposed to be suitable for smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile devices. It ought to be faster than traditional LTE when connecting to networks that include support for advanced LTE features . The new modems are also a stepping stone to 5G,…

Verizon to buy Yahoo for $250m less as deal to go ahead despite data breaches

February 20, 2017March 3, 2017

Verizon will press ahead with plans to buy Yahoo despite the two historic data breaches the internet giant revealed it had suffered last year. The US telecoms giant Verizon has renegotiated its $4.8bn (£3.85bn) deal to buy Yahoo to pay around $250m less in the wake of the record-breaking cyber attacks, according to Bloomberg. The sale, which was due to go ahead in the first three months of 2017, was delayed and almost derailed after Yahoo revealed hackers had stolen details from around 1.5bn accounts in two separate attacks back in 2013 and…

New York unveils final cybersecurity regulations

February 17, 2017March 3, 2017

Cybercriminals can cause significant financial losses for business entities as well as for consumers whose private information may be revealed and/or stolen for illicit purposes. The financial services industry is a significant target of cybersecurity threats. The New York Department of Financial Services unveiled the final cybersecurity regulations, which includes certain regulatory minimum standards while encouraging firms to keep pace with technological advances. New York is the financial capital of the world, and it’s critical that we do everything in our power to protect consumers and our financial system from the…

Google’s AI Duet lets you make music with a virtual pianist

February 17, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Google’s latest artificial intelligence experiment is a music-playing piano bot that digests whatever keyboard melodies you give it and tries to respond in kind. The neat tool is called Artificial Intelligence Duet, and it’s part of an ongoing push from Google’s Creative Lab division to help the public familiarize themselves with AI and all the ways it can mimic human behavior — and even create art. According to the Verge, a collection of music-focused Artificial Intelligence tools were first shown off last fall, but now AI Duet in particular has…

Microsoft Outgrows the Cloud Competition

February 17, 2017March 3, 2017 Staff Writer

As security continues to improve and enterprises increasingly move from on-premise data centers and infrastructure to the cloud, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) are positioned to soak up the largest shares of the unfolding market. A report from IDC estimates that public cloud spending will increase from $70 billion in 2015 to $140.1 billion in 2019 that’s a lot of potential business up for grabs for service providers. Amazon currently has a big lead in the space thanks to its multi-year head start, but Microsoft’s Azure offers comparable service and is…

Yahoo paying small price for big hacks

February 16, 2017March 3, 2017 Staff Writer

Yahoo is on the verge of cutting the price of its core-business sale to Verizon Communications by $250 million to $350 million, less than a 10 percent discount to what was originally agreed, according to media reports. That would be a small price to pay for massive hacks that affected over 1 billion users’ account data reports Reuters. In an effort to add online value to its increasingly commoditized telecommunications business, Verizon acquired onetime internet darling AOL and last July agreed to buy $40 billion internet company‘s advertising and search…

Chinese tech giant Baidu bets on AI and virtual reality

February 16, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Several tech giants and visionaries have been rallying around artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR) as the next big developments in technology. The Chinese online search giant Baidu Inc embarked on this strategy as it announced its first venture capital firm focusing next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality. According to a recent report by China Daily, the new company Baidu Venture, will mainly focus on early-stage AI, AR and VR projects. In an official statement Baidu says that new venture company will…