Blogs

Apple has a new lineup of iPad Pro and Air models for the first time in well over a year. Most people would probably be hard-pressed to tell the new ones from the old ones just by looking at them, but after hands-on sessions with both sizes of both tablets, the small details (especially for the Pros) all add up to a noticeably refined iPad experience. iPad Airs: Bigger is better But let's begin with the new Airs since there's a bit less to talk about. The 11-inch iPad Air (technically the ...

Our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with digital displays and AR, but at what cost? While it’s commonly said we live in the information era, I like calling it something else: the screen age. Over the past seventy years, we’ve seen displays seep into almost every aspect of our lives. We had televisions arrive in our homes, reshaping news and entertainment. Hot on their heels came smartphones, which changed communication and how we interact with the world at large. ...

The UK might not follow its pro-innovation, laissez-faire strategy for much longer The boom of artificial intelligence has spurred a regulatory frenzy across the globe — and Europe is at the forefront of the developments. Both the EU and the UK are attempting to find the elusive balance between leveraging AI’s growth and mitigating potential risks — but their approaches differ significantly. ...

PhotonVentures aims to boost Europe's photonics ecosystem PhotonVentures, a Dutch deep tech fund aiming to boost Europe’s photonics industry, has closed its second fundraising round with over €15mn — bringing its total capital to €75mn. The fund targets startups and scaleups developing solutions with photonic chips for a wide range of applications: from data transmission and health diagnostics to smart sensors, AI, AR, and VR. ...

Google's chief AI scientist believes that getting AGI right would lead to "maximal human flourishing" We have all been guilty of falling under the foundation model spell of the past year-and-a-half, initiated by OpenAI’s unveiling of ChatGPT to the public. But it is not only where large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 are concerned that incredible progress has been made in the field of artificial intelligence. And one company has been behind more impressive milestones than most — Deep...

Rigetti and Oxford Instruments NanoScience unveil 32-qubit quantum computer system, say more to come California-based quantum circuitry company Rigetti has brought a commercially available quantum computer to the UK. Only the second in the country, it was installed in collaboration with Oxford Instruments NanoScience — a cryogenics company that provides the cooling needed for superconducting qubits.  The system, supported by grants from the UK government, is Rigetti’s first UK-based quantu...

As machine translation improves, demand for human translators is plummeting AI threatens to decimate the translation profession, according to a new survey by a British union. Almost four in ten translators (36%) said they’ve already lost work due to generative AI. Nearly half of them (43%) said the tech has decreased their income. ...

Western Digital plans to release the first 4TB SD card next year. On Thursday, the storage firm announced plans to demo the product in person next week. Western Digital will launch the SD card, which follows the SD Association's Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard, under its SanDisk brand and market it toward "complex media and entertainment workflows," such as those involving cameras and laptops that use high-resolution video with high framerates, the announcement said. The spac...

Huawei is still out there making phones, even if it has been shunned by the US government and the US-aligned tech ecosystem. The latest phone has a new name: "Huawei Pura 70." While you wouldn't ever want to deal with the cobbled-together SoC or whatever is going on with Huawei's software, the "Ultra" model does have a cool party trick up its sleeve: a pop-out main camera lens. In the years before the smartphone took over all entry-level photography, there used to be a thing called a "point-a...

Europe has fallen behind Singapore and the US in the cultivated meat race Dutch startup Meatable has hosted the first legally approved tasting of cultivated meat in Europe. On the menu was a lab-grown pork sausage. Meatable says the produce is “indistinguishable” from traditional meat, but causes no harm to animals or the environment. ...

Youth and experience have combined to create an AI superpower Just a decade ago, the world’s biggest tech beast was a relative minnow. Microsoft had become notorious for disappointing product launches, stagnant innovation, and losing top talent. The first true software giant was becoming a big tech dinosaur. Fast forward to 2024 and Microsoft is the planet’s most valuable business. Under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, stock has soared by over 1,000% in 10 years. In January, the compa...

The Finnish roaster collaborated with AI consultancy startup Elev to create an unusual combo of four beans I am really into (my friends might say somewhat obsessed with) coffee. Not just for the hits of caffeine that fuel our productivity-enthralled capitalist society, but also for the taste, as well as different styles of brewing (although my Swedish roots make me partial to a pour-over).  Sadly, I do not often get to write about it, as — even though coffee roasting and brewing rely on te...

The government's efforts to keep the company in the Netherlands seem to be working In a major win for the Dutch tech industry, chip giant ASML intends to remain and further expand in the Netherlands. The chip machine manufacturer has signed a non-binding letter of intent with the City Council of Eindhoven, eyeing a potential expansion at the Brainport Industries Campus (BIC), west of the city. ...

Blue Skies Space has an unusual offer for researchers A British startup aims to launch science satellites into space in 2025 after raising a fresh £2mn. Blue Skies Space has devised a unique business plan for the stargazers. They will be the first-ever science satellites that provide data directly to researchers via a membership model, the company said. ...

The RoboSAPIENS project paves the way for more efficient and trustworthy adaptive robotics Demand for industrial robots is rising in Europe, especially driven by the benefits of automation. However, there are ongoing challenges in ensuring seamless collaboration with humans while maintaining safety. To address this issue, a consortium of European universities, technology accelerators, and private research labs is launching the RoboSAPIENs project. ...

Meta will open up the operating system that runs on its Quest mixed reality headsets to other technology companies, it announced today. What was previously simply called Quest software will be called Horizon OS, and the goal will be to move beyond the general-use Quest devices to more purpose-specific devices, according to an Instagram video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There will be headsets focused purely on watching TV and movies on virtual screens, with the emphasis on high-end OLED ...

MindAffects aims to provide a new hearing diagnostics solution for hard-to-test patients MindAffect, a Netherlands-based healthtech startup, has raised €1.1mn to bring its hearing diagnostics technology to market. A spinout from Radboud University, MindAffect has developed a patented brain computer interface (BCI) technology, which enables diagnosis of hearing impairments using brain signals. ...

The feature provides suggestions on word choice, style, phrasing, and tone DeepL, which has been rivalling machine translation giants such as Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, has launched an AI writing assistant tailored for businesses. Dubbed DeepL Write Pro, the product acts as a creative assistant for use during the drafting process. It provides suggestions on word choice, phrasing, style, and tone, aiming to improve the text, while preserving the writer’s own voice. ...

Skyports said the funding puts the company in a "market-leading position" A British drone maker plans to launch air taxis in 2026 after raising a whopping $110mn. Skyports has already flown electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft on delivery and monitoring trials. The new funding brings commercial air taxis closer to the services on offer. ...

FlexAI plans to combat artificial intelligence's growing compute power A startup promising “universal AI compute” has joined France’s thriving artificial intelligence sector. Paris-based FlexAI emerged from stealth today with a €28.5mn war chest and an ambitious plan to “unlock the future of machine intelligence.” To pick that lock, FlexAI is rearchitecting compute infrastructure. ...

The Polestar 5 model was fitted with silicon anode battery tech Polestar has successfully charged its upcoming EV model in just 10 minutes.    The Swedish car maker achieved the feat using a “silicon-dominant” battery built by Israeli startup StoreDot.  ...

Roku CEO Anthony Wood disclosed plans to introduce video ads to the Roku OS home screen. The news highlights Roku’s growing focus on advertising and an alarming trend in the streaming industry that sees ads increasingly forced on viewers. As spotted by The Streamable, during Roku's Q1 2024 earnings call last week, Wood, also the company's founder and chairman, boasted about the Roku OS home screen showing users ads "before they select an app," avoiding the possibility that they don't see any ...

Clear out the clutter without dropping a dime For many of us, Google storage is the modern-day hard drive. It’s the place where our most important thoughts, documents, and memories reside. But just like with a traditional hard drive, the space isn’t infinite, and running out of room can be a real problem. By default, Google gives you 15GB of space to use for everything associated with your account. That includes content connected to Gmail, Google Drive, and all Google photos (except those ...

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam can rotate 360 degrees and comes in three new shades. Amazon-owned Ring has announced a new version of its wired indoor security camera. The $79.99 Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam adds a motorized pan-tilt base to the Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen), which otherwise retains the same features as before: 1080p HD video, two-way talk, motion alerts, a built-in siren, and a manual privacy cover that blocks all audio and video. It’s just now you can point the camera up and down and...