This week’s new Macs all had one thing in common: a minimum of 16GB of RAM. That was true of the new Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and iMac, which were all refreshed with M4 processors this week. The MacBook Air was refreshed to start at 16GB of RAM, too, even though it didn’t get a bump up to the M4 chip. The change brings an end to the long-running era of 8GB of RAM as the default on consumer-grade Macs.

Apple had transitioned most of its Macs to 8GB of RAM by 2016. But now, after eight years, that quantity feels increasingly insufficient. Reviewers have criticized the entry-level RAM as limited since at least 2022. Local AI features like Apple Intelligence, which need constant RAM to work, have only accentuated the need to change things.

That said, Apple isn’t getting generous with RAM everywhere. If you want more, it’ll still cost you a pretty penny. Apple charges $200 for extra memory — for example, bumping the iMac from 16GB to 24GB is $200, while it costs $400 to go all the way to 32GB.

The RAM upgrade likely has to do with the launch of Apple Intelligence. As I wrote in September, the general approach to running on-device AI models is to keep them persistently loaded in RAM. 8GB already felt like a pittance (even if Apple itself thought it was just as good as 16GB), and that would’ve been felt much harder if users had to give some of that up to run AI.

Infamous Russian-linked threat actor Midnight Blizzard has been targeting US officials with spear phishing attacks across a range of government and non-government sectors, new research has claimed..

Findings released by Microsoft Threat Intelligence state Midnight Blizzard has been using these attacks to gather information since first being observed on October 22.

Chatbot versions of the teenagers Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey have been found on Character.ai – a platform which allows users to create digital versions of people.

Molly Russell took her life at the age of 14 after viewing suicide material online while Brianna Ghey, 16, was murdered by two teenagers in 2023.

The foundation set up in Molly Russell’s memory said it was “sickening” and an “utterly reprehensible failure of moderation.”

The platform is already being sued in the US by the mother of a 14-year-old boy who she says took his own life after becoming obsessed with an Character.ai chatbot.

In a statement to the Telegraph, which first reported the story, the firm said it “takes safety on our platform seriously and moderates Characters proactively and in response to user reports.”

The firm appeared to have deleted the chatbots after being alerted to them, the paper said.

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said the creation of the bots was a “sickening action that will cause further heartache to everyone who knew and loved Molly”.

“It vividly underscores why stronger regulation of both AI and user-generated platforms cannot come soon enough,” he said.

Esther Ghey, Brianna Ghey’s mother, told the Telegraph it was yet another example of how “manipulative and dangerous” the online world could be.

Chatbots are computer programme which can simulate human conversation.

The recent rapid development in artificial intelligence (AI) have seen them become much more sophisticated and realistic, prompting more companies to set up platforms where users can create digital “people” to interact with.

Character.ai – which was founded by former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas – is one such platform.

It has terms of service which ban using the platform to “impersonate any person or entity” and in its “safety centre” the company says its guiding principle is that its “product should never produce responses that are likely to harm users or others”.

It says it uses automated tools and user reports to identify uses that break its rules and is also building a “trust and safety” team.

But it notes that “no AI is currently perfect” and safety in AI is an “evolving space”.

Character.ai is currently the subject of a lawsuit brought by Megan Garcia, a woman from Florida whose 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer, took his own life after becoming obsessed with an AI avatar inspired by a Game of Thrones character.

According to transcripts of their chats in Garcia’s court filings her son discussed ending his life with the chatbot.

In a final conversation Setzer told the chatbot he was “coming home” – and it encouraged him to do so “as soon as possible”.

Shortly afterwards he ended his life.

Character.ai told CBS News it had protections specifically focused on suicidal and self-harm behaviours and that it would be introducing more stringent safety features for under-18s “imminently”.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is out today. While nothing has been officially announced by developer Deck Nine or publisher Square Enix, several aspects of Double Exposure’s conclusion suggest that there is an intention to release a direct sequel.

 Ending spoilers follow for Life is Strange: Double Exposure.

Most obviously, the very end of Double Exposure’s credits proclaims: “Max Caulfield will return.” It’s the kind of proclamation that became a cliché thanks to Marvel Cinematic Universe movies promising that the heroes they feature would come back to theaters in the future. To see that used in a very different kind of superpower-related media like Life is Strange is unexpected, but apt.

At the very least, it’s a confirmation that Max Caulfield is too iconic a character for Square Enix to leave behind. It was a bit of a surprise that Double Exposure starred her when it was announced, but now we should expect her to be a key player in the series going forward. Looking at how Double Exposure’s narrative wraps up, there’s also some clear indication of where it will go next.

The biggest twist in Double Exposure is that Max’s friend, Safi, also has superpowers. She can transform into other people, and her actions ultimately cause the storm at Double Exposure’s climax. Max refuses to kill Safi and creates a merged timeline for Safi to survive. After that, Safi tells Max that she will search for other people with powers now that she knows she isn’t the only one with them.

Max can choose to agree to support her or not, and Double Exposure ends with her giving a pep talk to her friends about how they’ll be prepared for whatever comes next. A post-credit scene sees Safi recruit Diamond, a student Max interacts with a lot throughout the adventure and who has powers, after the events of this game. It’s unknown exactly where the story will go from here, as no official announcements have been made and there is no insider information on it. I’ll personally speculate that this is setting up a sequel where superpowered characters from other Life is Strange games could potentially appear.

That continuation is likely a ways from release, though, so for now, we can just enjoy Double Exposure for what it is and wait for Square Enix to make an official announcement. If you want to experience this ending, Life is Strange: Double Exposure is now available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Sharp has just announced a new camera-centric flagship smartphone you won’t be able to buy. Well, most of you won’t be able to buy, is the better way to put it. The phone’s name is Sharp Aquos R9 pro.

Sharp has a new camera-centric flagship to offer, but its availability will be limited

This handset was announced in Japan, as you may have guessed. It will be hitting the Japanese market in December, and will then move to Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore. That’s about it, though. Users from Europe and the US won’t be able to get their hands on it.

This phone does offer a rather unique design, and it’s obvious it’s camera-centric. There is a huge camera oreo on the back, with three cameras on the inside. Leica lenses are also a part of the package.

Sharp used vegan leather on the backplate, though what’s interesting is that leather doesn’t cover the entirety of the backplate. Sharp left some room on the left side for whatever reason, probably for the design effect.

A flat display is used, while the phone also includes a physical camera shutter

On the front, you’ll see a flat display with a centered display camera hole at the top. The bezels are very thin here. All the physical buttons sit on the right side. The power/lock key is located below the volume up and down buttons, while the camera shutter key is placed lower on the right side.

This smartphone has a 6.7-inch QHD+ (3120 x 1440) Pro IGZO OLED display. That panel offers a variable refresh rate from 1 to 240Hz, and an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner too.

The SoC choice is a bit odd, though

The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 fuels this smartphone, not the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is an interesting move by Sharp. The phone also offers 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

There is also a vapor chamber cooling system included here, and it extends to the ring around the camera too, which is interesting. That camera ring can also hold accessories like ND or polarized filters for the camera.

Four 50.3-megapixel cameras are used here, three of which are on the back

A 50.3-megapixel main camera packs in a huge 1/0.98-inch sensor. That camera has a 23mm f/1.8 aperture lens and supports OIS. A 50.3-megapixel telephoto camera offers an f/2.6 aperture lens and uses a 1/1.56-inch sensor. 2.8x optical zoom is available, as is 20x digital zoo. OIS is supported here too.

The third camera on the back is a 50.3-megapixel unit too, but with a 13mm f/2.2 aperture lens. This camera offers a field-of-view (FoV) of 122 degrees and is used to capture macro shots. A fourth camera sits on the front, and it’s also a 50.3-megapixel unit. It has a 23mm f/2.2 aperture lens with an 84-degree FoV.

Android 14 comes pre-installed, while the phone is water and dust resistant

A 5,000mAh battery is also included, while WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are both supported. Android 14 comes out of the box, while the phone will receive up to 3 OS updates and 5 years’ worth of security patches. It’s IP68 certified for water and dust resistance too.

This smartphone is priced at JPY190,000 ($1,235). Sharp will also be selling a case with a sholuder strap, so that you can pretend this phone is a dedicated camera. Considering the price of the device, however, it’s odd Sharp didn’t go with the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

Alation on Wednesday launched Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome, an extension of the vendor’s platform that enables customers to discover data and use it to inform decisions without leaving Chrome.

A 2022 study by the Harvard Business Review found that the average employee in a Fortune 500 company toggles between applications and websites 1,200 times per day, which adds up to four hours per week and five weeks out of the year spent context-switching.

Alation Anywhere addresses that wasted time by saving users from having to toggle between applications and the vendor’s environment. Before launching Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome, the vendor previously released extensions of its platform for Slack, Microsoft Teams, Excel and Google Sheets.

Given that Alation Anywhere for Google Chrome addresses time wasted switching between websites and the Alation environment and speeds access to Alation’s data catalog capabilities, it is a helpful addition to the vendor’s platform, according to Matt Aslett, an analyst at ISG’s Ventana Research.

“The primary goal of capabilities like Alation Anywhere is to accelerate data-driven decision-making,” he said. “It does this by facilitating access to governed and curated data from Alation Data Catalog via business productivity tools and applications. This reduces the need for context-switching, which can delay time to insight.”

Based in Redwood City, Calif., Alation is a data catalog specialist whose Data Intelligence Platform lets users integrate and organize data from disparate sources that can be used to train AI models as well as inform data products such as reports and dashboards.

Recently, with enterprise interest in developing AI models and applications surging — including developing generative AI — the vendor launched a new AI governance suite.