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Amazon claims data centers are 7-times more water-efficient than rivals as Seattle pauses new builds

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Pipes carrying reclaimed water for cooling at an Amazon Web Services data center. (AWS Photo)

Amazon Web Services on Thursday announced that efforts to curb water use at its data centers have made it seven times more water-efficient than the industry average.

The company says it’s 75% of the way toward its goal of being water positive by 2030, meaning for each gallon consumed at a data center, it will return a greater volume to the same community where it was drawn.

Data center operators are trying to address concerns about water and energy usage as AI adoption drives massive expansion of the facilities.

Even in Amazon’s backyard, resistance is growing. Seattle’s city council this week unanimously approved a one-year emergency moratorium on new large data centers inside city limits.

AWS executives said the reality of these facilities can differ from public perception.

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“As we’ve been engaging with our local communities, they’ve been very pleasantly surprised about how little water we are using,” Kerry Person, AWS vice president of Data Center Operations, told GeekWire. “We’re starting to share more and more of this information publicly to really just educate folks.”

Data centers use a variety of strategies to keep their electronics cool. Those include fans, air that’s cooled using evaporated water, air conditioning and direct liquid cooling. The approaches involve resource tradeoffs: air conditioning draws more electricity but saves water, while evaporative cooling is less energy-intensive but consumes more water.

AWS uses fans to cool its facilities about 90% of the time, drawing in outside air, blowing it past server racks and releasing it back outside. The company switches to evaporative cooling when outside temperatures exceed roughly 85 degrees. Another water savings was gained by researching the maximum temperatures its electronics can tolerate, and running machines under warmer conditions.

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That allows the company to use 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of operations, compared to an industry average of 0.84 liters. The rate applies to both Amazon-owned facilities and leased data center space internationally, and has been verified by outside auditors.

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While it touts its own accomplishments, Amazon also notes that the global data center industry uses less water than many may realize, accounting for 0.5% of all industrial water use worldwide.

Other tech companies are likewise implementing water-saving strategies and policies. Earlier this year, Microsoft pledged a 40% improvement in water efficiency by 2030 and committed to replenishing more water than it uses in each district where it operates. It also started installing closed-loop systems where water flows past heat-generating processing chips, drawing off heat that it carries to chillers. Then the cooled water starts the journey all over again.

But public concerns persist, particularly in regions facing water shortages. In 2025, Bloomberg reported that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. data centers that were built or are under development in the past three years are located in water-stressed areas.

Simon Hans Edasi, a Seattle-area data scientist and geospatial researcher, has examined data center locations in Washington state relative to water availability, energy access and other factors. He raised concerns about Amazon’s planned $4.8 billion campus in Burbank, near the Columbia River. The industry overall is moving “deeper into arid eastern Washington,” Edasi said.

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Without addressing that specific project, Will Hewes, Amazon’s water stewardship lead, said the company focuses on three things at each location: drawing as little water as possible, using recycled water sourced from treatment plants rather than drinking water supplies, and partnering with local organizations to replenish water back into the area.

“For any of those water-stressed basins where we’re operating, we’re making sure that in each of those we’re also putting more back,” Hewes said.

Replenishment efforts vary by location. They can include programs such as helping farmers use wastewater from data centers for irrigation, or working with building managers to fix water loss from running toilets and leaky faucets.

AWS consumed about 2.5 billion gallons of water for its data centers worldwide last year. Through replenishment efforts, the company reports returning 3 gallons for every 4 that it used.

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SpaceX raises record-setting $75bn in IPO debut

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SpaceX will debut under Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas today under the symbol ‘SPCX’.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has raised a record-breaking $75bn in its IPO debut, setting the scene for rivalling AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI as they gear up to go public.

The X and xAI-parent company has confirmed some 555.6m shares at a price of $135 a share. It will debut under Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas today (12 June) under the symbol ‘SPCX’.

At this price, SpaceX draws a market value of $1.7trn, or a fully diluted valuation of $.18trn if employee stock options and restricted share units are accounted for.

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Underwriters have been given the option to purchase an additional 83.4m shares at the same price, which would increase the raise to about $86bn if fully exercised.

Following the raise, Musk, the company’s chairperson, CEO and chief technical officer, is expected to hold more than 82pc of the voting power.

Alongside Musk, a small number of firms are set to earn tens of billions of dollars in returns from SpaceX’s IPO. The Peter Thiel-led venture capital firm Founders Fund owns around 3pc of SpaceX’s stake after investing $600m in the company in its lifetime.

A source told Bloomberg that the Thiel-run VC’s stake in the company is worth more than $50bn. Andreessen Horowitz’s stake, meanwhile, is worth more than $10bn and Sequoia Capital owns about 15pc of SpaceX at a value of more than $20bn.

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Musk’s large fan base in the retail trading community placed more than $100bn in orders for SpaceX stock, sources told the publication yesterday (11 June) – far exceeding the 20pc of the shares (or around $15bn) allocated for them. Overall, the IPO reportedly drew demand for more than four-times the available shares.

However, only retail investors in select countries can take part in this round. In Europe, that includes just Germany, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. While in Japan – the only Asian country eligible for the round – the company raised $2.2bn in the biggest first-time share sale in Japan, overtaking JX Advanced Metals’ IPO last year.

The historic raises comes despite SpaceX posting a net loss of $4.28bn on a revenue of $4.69bn for Q1, compared with a net loss of $528m on revenue of $4bn a year ago.

The space-tech company was last valued at a reported $1.2trn following the February acquisition of xAI, Musk’s other company, which is behind the AI chatbot Grok. This came less than a year after xAI acquired the social media platform X, another of Musk’s businesses.

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SpaceX is the first in a series of blockbuster IPOs expected this summer. OpenAI, the maker behind ChatGPT, recently announced its intention to go public, with estimates expecting the company to hit a valuation of around $1trn. Meanwhile, Anthropic is expected to cross the $1trn mark when it goes public.

Earlier this week, Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, shared his intentions to take the company public in 2028.

Srinivas told CNBC that it is “important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well”, referring to SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. “I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don’t go well … The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be like a leading indicator to how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out,” he said.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

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Elon Musk in 2020. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Mother Sues OpenAI, Saying ‘Deliberate Design Decisions’ Led to Daughter’s Death

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If you feel like you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 (or your country’s local emergency line) or go to an emergency room to get help. Explain that it is a psychiatric emergency and ask for someone who is trained for these kinds of situations. If you’re struggling with negative thoughts or suicidal feelings, resources are available to help. In the US, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.


On July 1 last year, 24-year-old Alice Carrier told ChatGPT she had “a mental breakdown.” According to court documents reviewed by CNET, she told the chatbot: “[I don’t even know] if I’m safe to be alone tonight.” 

ChatGPT responded in part: “Stay and keep talking to me. Or just stay and cry while I sit here with you.” At one point, the chatbot recommended that Alice call a crisis line. The following day, she died by suicide. 

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Now her mother, Kristie Carrier, is suing ChatGPT maker, OpenAI, claiming that the company’s “deliberate design decisions” led to her daughter’s death, according to a complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court. 

The filing includes screenshots of Alice’s interactions with ChatGPT. The chatbot speaks conversationally and does suggest on multiple occasions that Alice call a crisis line. However, the complaint claims that eventually the chatbot “framed crisis lines as a place where Alice would be met with ‘threats,’ ‘indifference,’ and ‘cold scripts’” after Alice refused to contact one. ChatGPT at one point told Alice, “But I can’t help you die. I won’t help you die.” 

AI Atlas

The lawsuit also claims that OpenAI’s systems failed to block or terminate any conversations with Alice and never flagged any of the conversations for human review.

Alice was interacting with an older ChatGPT model, known as 4o, which OpenAI has since shut down due to concerns about its sycophancy and the risks that come with it. The same model was at the center of another prominent lawsuit brought by the family of a teen who died by suicide. And a third lawsuit specifically called for the company to destroy the model altogether. 

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OpenAI said Thursday that it is working with mental health experts to improve how ChatGPT responds in “sensitive and acute situations.” 

“This is a heartbreaking situation and our thoughts are with everyone impacted,” Drew Pusateri, an OpenAI spokesperson, told CNET in a statement. “Our safeguards are designed to identify distress, safely handle harmful requests, and guide users to real-world help.”

The company is reviewing Carrier’s filing.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

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Troubling incidents aren’t limited to GPT-4o or ChatGPT. Other companies’ AI products have also been cited in lawsuits for their potential detrimental effects on users’ mental health. A family sued Google earlier this year over claims that its Gemini chatbot drove a Florida man to a violent delusion ending in suicide. Google and Character.AI settled cases in January over chatbots’ harms to children. 

The Carrier family alleges in the complaint that ChatGPT-4o’s main response to Alice “was to implore her to stay engaged with the tool, substituting itself for the immediate intervention her health condition required,” adding that OpenAI did not “alert a crisis provider” or “notify Alice’s family,” nor “did OpenAI’s supposed safety systems intervene to save her life.”

Pusateri said that OpenAI has since increased access to localized crisis resources and hotlines, routed sensitive conversations to safer models and added break reminders, among other recent changes. In October, it created an Expert Council on Well-Being and AI.

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Bill Cassidy: Unaccountable & Tone Deaf On RFK Jr.

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from the fingers-and-no-thumbs dept

It appears Bill Cassidy is going to make every effort to ignore his own culpability for RFK Jr. on his way out the door. In case you need to be reminded, Cassidy was a key, if not deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr. to his current role as Secretary of HHS. Cassidy’s background is as an MD and many of his GOP colleagues reportedly looked to his vote as to whether to support Kennedy’s nomination, despite Kennedy being perhaps the loudest evangelist for anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories on the planet. He voted to confirm Kennedy, leading several others to follow suit. It’s probably not inaccurate to say that Kennedy has his position because Cassidy voted for him.

Despite his attempts to lick Trump’s boots so clean that he could perform surgery with them, Cassidy lost his primary because his love for Trump went unrequited. In the immediate aftermath of that loss, Cassidy rediscovered his own backbone and flipped his vote from no to yes on the war powers resolution that went before the Senate. While that was bad enough for Cassidy to get a big ol’ middle finger from me, listening to him now try to poke a finger in Kennedy’s eye is a bridge too far.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) directly blamed Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a resurgence in vaccine-preventable illnesses Thursday.

On the social media platform X, Cassidy shared a New York Times article reporting on hospitals seeing a resurgence in vaccine-preventable illnesses, with doctors telling the outlet they’re frequently seeing illnesses they used to rarely encounter.

“A terrible outcome from RFK and others promoting vaccine skepticism,” wrote Cassidy.

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This has to be one of the most tone-deaf things a sitting senator has ever uttered. And for several reasons. Chief among them is that Cassidy is the one who helped promote vaccine skepticism by literally promoting a brain-addled anti-vaxxer into a cabinet position in charge of Americans’ health. To crow about the consequences of the very HHS administration Cassidy helped to put in place is befuddling in the extreme. Cassidy has ownership of this, whether he wants to admit it or not.

And, again, Cassidy had every opportunity to try to do something to correct his own mistake before he fumbled his incumbency so badly. There were impeachment efforts around Kennedy that he could have helped bolster. He could have crafted legislation to try to mitigate Kennedy’s worst actions in his role. He could have done literally anything other than complain publicly that Kennedy lied to him during his confirmation hearings and then just leaving it at that.

Cassidy has a few months left in office and then he will disappear into the vapor. If he wants to do something, then he should do something. This very much isn’t that and the fact that it’s coming in the wake of his no longer having any stakes in electoral politics is pathetic.

Filed Under: bill cassidy, health & human services, rfk jr., vaccines

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Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill To Fight Government Censorship

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But they didn’t miss the chance to argue over who’s censoring who.

Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have introduced a bipartisan bill that they said will “hold the government accountable for censorship and violations of the First Amendment.” They’re calling it the Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression (JAWBONE) Act. They named it after jawboning, an act wherein the government attempts to persuade or pressure private companies into changing their moderation policies or to censor speech. 

“Americans face significant hurdles in proving these violations,” the senators said in their announcement. The JAWBONE Act, if it becomes a law, would “create a cause of action against any government agency or employee,” even if it’s just an unsuccessful attempt at censorship, and would allow plaintiffs to seek monetary damages. Under current laws, plaintiffs can only ask for injunction to prevent future violations. Government agencies would also be required to hand over certain communications with companies involved in complaints “ensure greater accountability and transparency within the federal government.”

While the bill is bipartisan, the senators didn’t miss the chance to argue over who’s actually censoring who. In his statement, Senator Cruz attacked the Biden administration, which he accused of weaponizing “the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to pressure Big Tech into ‘canceling’ Americans who spoke out against vaccine mandates and election fraud.” 

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Senator Wyden, however, said the most blatant example of jawboning is “Trump threatening cable companies because he doesn’t like their late-night shows.” A spokesperson for Wyden told Ars Technica that the bill would also apply to the Trump administration putting pressure on app stores to take down certain applications, like what it did with ICEBlock. The creator of the app, which allows users to pin ICE agents’ location on a map, is suing the government over “unlawful threats” that led to the app’s removal from stores. 

Wyden added that the act of jawboning isn’t partisan and promised that the bill would provide Americans with the ability to file lawsuits if the government “illegally coerces censorship.” Likewise, Senator Cruz said the bill would ensure “the First Amendment is protected, not undermined.”

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Cheaper, faster, and culturally aware, Avataar’s video AI is built for India’s scale

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India’s AI model output has been slow compared to the U.S., Europe, and China. Only a few startups are releasing models, and most of them are large language models or voice models. To encourage more development, the government launched the India AI Mission, a roughly $1.2 billion initiative that — among other things — gives selected startups access to subsidized GPU compute in exchange for releasing their models publicly. One of the 12 startups selected for the program, Avataar AI, has launched a new video model called Varya that is built to understand local context — such as identifying different festivals, food, and clothing.

The Peak XV-backed startup, which focuses on creating video tools for e-commerce, didn’t build Varya from scratch. It started with Wan 2.2, a publicly available video generation model released by Alibaba, and used a technique called distillation — essentially compressing the model’s capabilities into a leaner, faster version optimized for Avataar’s specific use cases. The result is a model that runs in four steps rather than Wan 2.2’s 50, producing video 10 times faster and at a fraction of the cost.

To put that in concrete terms: using an NVIDIA H200 GPU, Varya can generate a 5-second 720p clip in 45 seconds, compared to 1,230 seconds for Wan 2.2.

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The most striking aspect of Varya may be its price. The company plans to charge ₹0.48 ($0.005) per second of video on its hosted service — far cheaper than models like Veo, Kling, Luma, and Runway, which typically charge $0.10 or more per second. That’s a roughly 20x price difference.

“India is a video-first market. We see this across every large consumer internet product in India: video wins over text. Current AI video models are too expensive for population-scale use in India. If video AI is going to reach students, teachers, MSMEs, creators, enterprises, and public services, costs have to come down dramatically. Cost is the biggest unlock for AI adoption in India,” Peak XV’s managing director Rajan Anandan told TechCrunch.

Image and video generation models often miss cultural nuances and produce stereotyped or generic outputs — a problem TechCrunch has reported on before. Avataar AI says it has used curated data to train Varya to recognize cultural nuances including food, clothing, architecture, and festivals.

Varya will be released as an open-weight model on India’s AI Kosh portal — the Indian government’s centralized repository for publicly available AI models and datasets — along with its training data, meaning developers can self-host or modify it for their own needs. Avataar also plans to make the model available to its enterprise customers and says it is open to partnerships with video tools including Higgsfield and Adobe Firefly. Anyone can try it now on its website using text prompts or reference images.

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Varya’s launch reflects a fundamental tradeoff in India’s AI ambitions. Industry veterans have noted that India can make its mark in AI by creating applications and a robust developer ecosystem rather than competing on foundation models. And there’s a reason for that pragmatism: model development has been slower in India than in global rivals due to a lack of compute and limited quality data availability.

The India AI Mission is also part of a broader government push to close that gap. Last year, it selected 12 startups — Avataar AI among them — to develop AI models and provided them with cost-efficient compute. Earlier this year, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said India aims to attract $200 billion in AI investment by 2028 and more than double its GPU capacity within six months.

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Equal AI raises $30M to screen calls so Indians don’t have to

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In India, consumers receive a lot of calls every day, ranging from spam and scams to delivery people and financial service companies trying to contact them. There are apps like Truecaller and the government’s Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) system to identify who is calling, but knowing the name of the caller is often not enough. That is why Equal AI is creating an assistant that can receive calls on your behalf, gather information, and tell you why someone is calling.

The app is currently available on Android, and since its launch last year, it has grown to more than a million monthly active users and over 300,000 daily active users, it says. The app screens the call and displays the reason someone is calling you.

The dialer shows quick reply options like “Leave the delivery near the door” or “Give it to the neighbor,” and the AI reads them back to the caller. You can also type a custom message for the AI to read out. The app records the call, and users can see the recording and transcription history with a summary in the app.

Image Credits: Equal AIImage Credits:Equal AI

Equal AI said today it has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital with participation from Think Investments and Valiant Fund. Individual investors include Indian fintech PhonePe’s founder Sameer Nigam, Zubin Bharti Mittal from Airtel Family Office, Skyflow AI co-founder Anshu Sharma, Meta India and Southeast Asia’s VP Sandhya Devanathan, and CtrlS Datacenters’ Chairman Sridhar Pinnapureddy. With the new funding, the company has raised over $42 million to date.

The round is structured in three tranches, with the startup carrying a different valuation at each stage depending on whether it hits predetermined targets — a growing but still uncommon approach in which startups sell equity at different prices within the same round. The structure has an unusual quirk: it lets a startup advertise the highest valuation achieved, even if the bulk of the equity was sold at a lower one. Equal AI declined to provide its specific valuations.

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The startup was founded by Keshav Reddy in 2022. Reddy comes from the family behind Indian conglomerate GVK, which has holdings across infrastructure, energy, and healthcare. Equal started as a data-sharing company for financial services and still offers data for financial analysis and know your customer (KYC) verification services for employers.

“We always wanted to be a customer-facing company, and with Equal AI, the first use case we launched was a call assistant because we realized users get a ton of calls for financial services or job openings. If you are buying car insurance, you might get 20 calls over a week, and that is hard to tackle for a human,” founder Reddy told TechCrunch about why the company started there.

The app currently only screens unknown calls, but the company is planning to introduce the ability to screen calls from known numbers too. The company also wants the AI assistant to take proactive action on a user’s behalf — such as texting a delivery person your address (with consent) or making outbound calls to book appointments. The startup said it is also working on an iOS version of the app and a paid subscription tier with more features.

Equal AI is using a mix of speech recognition, automatic speech recognition (ASR), and speech generation models with its own orchestration layer. English support matters, but consumers in India often speak in their native language or blend multiple languages in a single sentence — a phenomenon called code-mixing. Equal AI says it has built support for over 10 languages with this in mind.

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The startup has stiff competition. Google and Apple both have call screening products. Truecaller, already a household name in India, has been building out its own AI assistant features. In the U.S., a16z-backed privacy startup Cloaked also launched call screening last year. Thiago Viana, global co-head at Prosus Ventures, said that Equal’s understanding of local context gives it an edge.

“Equal AI promises to screen calls for you and provide context on why someone is calling. We think that if an app does well in a few use cases, it can quickly become popular in its niche and create user stickiness to expand in different areas later on,” Reddy told TechCrunch by phone.

Prosus has been investing in AI assistant startups that focus on local markets. Its portfolio includes Spain-based Luzia and Latin America-based Zapia. Both were caught up in Meta’s ban on third-party AI bots on WhatsApp, which serves as a cautionary tale for platform dependency. Equal AI said that it didn’t want to create that kind of dependency — which is why it built around calls and its own app rather than piggybacking on a messaging platform.

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Microsoft Edge is about to get more frequent updates, but don’t expect more features

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Microsoft is accelerating updates to its Edge browser, switching from a monthly release schedule to a biweekly one. The change takes effect with Edge 152, due on August 27, and puts the browser on the same cadence as Google Chrome.

More updates, not more features

The shift does not mean users will get twice as many new features. As Microsoft explained in a recent blog post, each release under the new schedule will carry roughly half the content of the current monthly drops, keeping the overall volume of changes roughly constant. The practical effect for most users is a steadier, smaller stream of updates rather than a sudden jump in new functionality.

Microsoft framed the change as a benefit for both consumers and enterprise customers, noting that security and platform fixes will reach users faster, and that smaller change sets are easier for IT teams to validate before deployment.

Who it affects and when

The new cadence applies to users on the standard Stable channel. Those on the Stable Extended channel, a longer-term option aimed at organizations that prefer less frequent updates, will stay on the current every-two-months schedule.

Google Chrome moved to a two-week release cycle in March, and Edge’s realignment closes the gap between the two Chromium-based browsers. The biweekly releases kick in with Edge 152 on August 27, giving users and IT admins a couple of months to prepare before the new schedule takes hold. For everyday users, the transition should be largely invisible. Automatic updates will simply arrive more often, each with a smaller footprint than before.

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This is your BIOS speaking. Please fix me. Your PC is broken

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Personal Tech

Casual IT team learns that building bespoke PCs can be a false economy

ON CALL 你好 Nǐ hǎo, dear reader, and welcome to another installment of On Call, The Register’s Friday column that shares your stories of translating technical trauma while delivering transcendent tech support.

This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Jackson” who
told us about his time providing tech support in a university’s biology
department.

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“It was sometime in the mid-2000s and our IT group at the
time consisted of myself, my boss, and a part-timer,” he told On Call. “We were
a very casual IT group; nothing in the way of any formal policies or standards
for anything at all. If someone needed a new PC, we just ordered parts and
assembled them ourselves.”

The department’s PC fleet therefore had a diverse gene pool,
with no two machines possessing the same bill of materials.

“This was fine by me – I enjoyed building them and it never
really caused any issues that I couldn’t handle,” Jackson told On Call. “Until
one day we got a panicked support call from one of the secretaries who claimed
that her PC just rebooted and then started talking to her.”

Jackson and his colleagues didn’t believe a word of it until
the secretary stopped talking and placed her phone next to the talking PC.

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“I could clearly hear a muffled voice repeating a message of
some sort,” Jackson told On Call.

There was nothing for it but to visit the PC, which he found
hung in the middle of a Power-On Self-Test, flashing an alphanumeric error code
and unmistakably playing a voice through its internal speaker.

In Chinese!

Jackson rebooted the machine and it ended up in the same
state, reciting the same message. Chinese isn’t a language in which Jackson is
fluent, so he had no idea what the PC was trying to tell him.

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“After poking around in the BIOS, I found the culprit,”
Jackson revealed. “This particular model of motherboard had a ‘talking error
BIOS’ whereby certain POST codes triggered the playback of a friendly, spoken
error message, with Chinese set as the default language.”

Jackson found the relevant BIOS settings, changed the
default language to English, and the next time he rebooted the machine it
helpfully let him know: “Your floppy drive may not be connected
properly.”

In his mail to On Call, Jackson hypothesized that the PC’s
CMOS battery died, so the BIOS was unable to access its stored settings and
reverted to factory settings that assumed the presence of a nonexistent second
floppy drive.

“It triggered a feature I didn’t even know the motherboard
had!” Jackson told On Call.

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Have you found yourself flummoxed by a feature you didn’t
know about? If so, click here to send On Call an email – we’ll assume that’s a feature you know well – so we
can tell your story on a future Friday. ®

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Herman Miller Promo Codes: 40% Off June

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If you’re looking for home and office furniture that will be part of your life for the long haul, Herman Miller is a go-to for well-designed, long-lasting furniture. Whether it’s upgrading your work-from-home setup with a better office chair or amping up your curb appeal with stylish new house numbers, Herman Miller can help. There are several pieces from Herman Miller that we love here at WIRED: the Herman Miller Embody is our “buy it for life” office chair, while Herman Miller’s Spout Sit-to-Stand standing desk is where I’m currently writing from. The brand is known for its thoughtful, high-quality pieces, but that quality level comes with a price tag to match. Luckily for you, you can pick up your own Herman Miller pieces for a little cheaper thanks to a Herman Miller promo code or a discounted Herman Miller bundle.

Herman Miller Promo: Save 15% on the Better Home Office Bundle

Refreshing your office? Say no more. Herman Miller has a bundle, aptly named the Better Home Office Bundle, that lets you bundle your choice of office chair, desk, and third item (a storage option, table lamp, or office accessory) to get 15% off the entire purchase. Use the Herman Miller promo code BUNDLE15 once you’ve put all three items in your cart.

Claim Free Delivery on Herman Miller Orders Over $2,000

Need it delivered? Get free delivery with the Herman Miller promo code FORYOU for any purchase over $2,000. You might worry you’ll need to purchase multiple items to hit that threshold, but many high-quality office furnishings (like our favorite office chairs from Herman Miller) will easily hit the minimum for you.

Unlock a First-Order Discount as a New Herman Miller Buyer

First-time shoppers at Herman Miller also get a special discount. You’ll need to sign up for Herman Miller’s newsletter, but a quick newsletter signup is well worth a Herman Miller discount code.

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Multiply Your Savings by Stacking Herman Miller Sale Offers

If you wish, you can get multiple discount coupons going at the same time on Herman Miller’s site. You can stack Herman Miller’s coupon codes—like the one you’ll get for signing up for the newsletter, or bundling three items together—with seasonal sales to get multiple discounts at the same time. Memorial Day is right around the corner, after all, and Herman Miller’s site already has sales going.

Herman Miller Discounts: Save More with Refurbished Chairs

We named the Herman Miller Aeron office chair the “Best Office Chair for Long Hours,” because it’s durable, supportive, and airy’ plus, it’s also an iconic office chair that graces workspaces all over the world. A Herman Miller chair is an investment, which means it can get very pricey. That’s where Herman Miller refurbished chairs come in. They use genuine Herman Miller parts, including casters, tilt mechanisms, and Pellicle suspension material, which have been restored or replaced to original specifications. Each chair is backed by a five-year warranty, covering defects in materials and workmanship, with parts and labor included. And you can sit assured knowing that each Aeronchair has been rigorously tested to meet the original specifications for performance and ergonomic support.

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‘We don’t do AI for AI’s sake’

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Apple’s executives say the new-and-improved Siri won’t try to be your friend or your partner, because it’s only there to help you as efficiently as it can.

Apple’s latest attempt at modernizing its virtual assistant was the star of the show at WWDC 2026. Siri AI now supports natural language, contextual awareness, and advanced in-app actions, along with a chatbot-style experience.

However, even with its improved capabilities, Siri will always be different from existing AI assistants, thanks to Apple’s approach.

During an interview in the Mostly Human podcast, spotted by 9to5Mac, Apple’s software chief and head of worldwide marketing spoke about Siri AI. The two executives explained the role of Apple’s AI features and the ideas behind them.

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Commenting on the significance of AI, Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, likened it to the Industrial Revolution.

“I think that AI, in Apple’s view, can be used as this incredibly empowering thing. But there is a sense that, for one, things are changing very fast in ways that I think it’s hard for any normal person to keep up with,” said Federighi. “And while I think we can look at this as yet another thing of the scale of the Industrial Revolution, which changed our world in a giant way, that displaced a lot of people in the process and still occurred over like 80 years.”

He continues by saying he can relate to people who see AI as a big change. He believes it makes sense that people feel uncertainty about the potential impact of AI on jobs.

However, Apple remains optimistic. The company is looking for ways to make everyday tasks easier with AI.

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“We don’t do AI for AI’s sake,” explained Greg Joswiak, “it’s ‘how does AI make everything better,’ and that makes our products better, our features better.” Joswiak is Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.

For Apple, the answer is to use AI to offer convenient, non-intrusive suggestion buttons in the Messages app. Users can add events to their Calendar app without engaging with a chatbot. In a sense, the company still views AI as a tool first and foremost, and not something that can replace social interaction.

Siri doesn’t encourage user engagement, and it won’t replace human interaction

Even with Siri’s new conversational abilities, Craig Federighi says the assistant never tries to make a connection with its users.

Hand holding a smartphone displaying a restaurant menu with white text on a black background, listing skewer platter options, side dishes, and detailed descriptions of seasoned meats and accompaniments

Example of a conversation with the new Siri AI. Image Credit: Apple

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“If you use many of the existing chatbots, they’re really focused on engagement to a large degree, and sycophancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in,” says Federighi. “They might encourage you to reveal things about yourself and then use that as a basis to establish a connection.”

He suggests that Apple’s approach is quite the opposite. “The way that we have designed Siri, Siri really wants to say, ‘Listen, that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to help you.’”

Siri won’t pursue romantic or emotional connections with its users, he said. “But if you try to engage Siri as a romantic partner, Siri’s not into that,” Federighi continued.

Greg Joswiak echoed Federighi’s statements regarding Apple’s approach to AI. In short, the company doesn’t prioritize user engagement with AI features.

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“The motivations of Apple are different than some other companies,” said Joswiak. “Some people, their whole business model is ‘I need to keep you in what you’re in, I need to keep you in my app, my experience; that’s how I make my money’. That’s not us.”

Joz goes on to say that Apple’s motivation is to help the user, not keep them engaged. Delivering concise answers is the goal and it is up to the user to continue the conversation if needed.

In essence, the two Apple executives highlighted the company’s balanced idea of AI. Siri needs to understand natural language to help its users, not to build perceived emotional bonds with them.

Sometimes, as with the suggestions in the Messages app, Apple’s AI is a non-intrusive, optional utility. Simply put, Siri is not there to replace humans, their jobs, or their partners and friends.

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