China verbannt AMD, Intel und Microsoft aus Regierungscomputern

Sichere und verlässliche Prozessoren und Betriebssysteme sollen chinesische Regierungsstellen laut einem Bericht der Financial Times vom Sonntag in Zukunft einsetzen; Hardware von AMD und Intel sowie Betriebssysteme von Microsoft hingegen nicht mehr.
Dem Bericht zufolge gilt dies für Regierungsstellen oberhalb der kommunalen Ebene und sowohl für übliche Arbeitsrechner als auch für Server. Ausländische Software solle grundsätzlich durch einheimische Lösungen ersetzt werden.

Listen zulässiger Technik

Die Nachrichtenagentur Reuters berichtet zudem von Ende Dezember veröffentlichten Listen von CPUs, Betriebssystemen und zentralisierten Datenbanken, die drei Jahre lang nach dem Veröffentlichungsdatum als "sicher und zuverlässig" gelten und alle von chinesischen Unternehmen stammen sollen.

Auf Anfragen von Reuters und der Financial Times reagierten sowohl die chinesische Regierung als auch die betroffenen Hardware-Hersteller den Berichten zufolge nicht.

                      27 Mac-Apps ohne Abo: Software-Perlen vorgestellt

Apple und viele Mitspieler in der Softwareindustrie versuchen seit mehreren Jahren, Nutzer in Abomodelle zu drängen: Statt eine Anwendung vollständig zu kaufen, soll man für diese möglichst regelmäßig eine Nutzungsgebühr entrichten – zunächst auf mobilen Plattformen, mittlerweile aber auch unter macOS. Entwickler erhalten so regelmäßige Einnahmen, um ihre Software zu verbessern, heißt es zur Begründung – und auch Updates seien ja inkludiert. Doch wer das nicht möchte, steht glücklicherweise nicht im Regen: Es gibt durchaus eine ganze Reihe von Mac-Apps, die traditionell vermarktet werden. Unsere Sammlung ist das beste Beispiel dafür: 27 nützliche Apps für alle Bereiche.

Dieser Beitrag konzentriert sich auf kostenpflichtige macOS-Apps. In weiteren Artikeln stellen wir 20 Top-Apps für iPhone und iPad sowie 23 nützliche Freeware-Perlen für Macs und 25 kostenlose App-Helferlein für das iPhone vor.

                      **US to announce billions in subsidies for advanced chips -WSJ**

Jan 27 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's administration is expected to award billions of dollars in subsidies in coming weeks to top semiconductor companies including Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW), opens new tab to help build new factories in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.The forthcoming announcements aim to kick-start manufacturing of advanced semiconductors that power smartphones, artificial intelligence, and weapons systems, the WSJ reported, citing industry executives familiar with the negotiations.
The executives expect some announcements to come before Biden's State of the Union address on March 7, according to the report.Among the likely recipients of the subsidies, Intel has projects underway in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon that will cost more than $ 43.5 billion, the paper said.Another likely recipient, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has two plants under construction near Phoenix for a total investment of $ 40 billion. South Korea's Samsung Electronics, also a contender, has a $ 17.3 billion project in Texas.
Micron Technology (MU.O), opens new tab, Texas Instruments (TXN.O), opens new tab, and GlobalFoundries (GFS.O), opens new tab count among other top contenders, WSJ added citing industry executives.The U.S. Department of Commerce refused to discuss any potential applicants and declined to comment on any timing reports.“This is a merit-based process with tough commercial negotiations — CHIPS awards will be entirely dependent upon which projects will advance US economic and national security,” a department spokesperson said to Reuters citing a Commerce official.
TSMC declined to comment while Intel did not respond to a request.In December last year, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she would make around a dozen funding awards for semiconductor chips within the next year, including multi-billion dollar announcements that could drastically reshape U.S. chip production.The first award was announced in December, of over $ 35 million to a BAE Systems (BAES.L), opens new tab facility in Hampshire to produce chips for fighter planes, part of a $ 39 billion "Chips for America" subsidy program approved by the U.S. Congress in 2022.

                                **UK Supreme Court: No, your AI can’t hold a patent**

The UK's highest court ruled today that artificial intelligence systems can’t be the official holder of a patent, echoing legal trends elsewhere in the Western world and highlighting the legal issues still to come for the burgeoning field of generative AI.

The UK Supreme Court’s ruling, in Thaler v. Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, carefully marked out the limitations of the decision, saying that the appeal is “not concerned with the broader question of whether technical advances generated by machines acting autonomously and powered by AI should be patentable.” The ruling, instead, focused only on whether the patent office could grant a patent to an AI systems per se. In this case the AI was DABUS, developed by Stephen Thaler, the president and CEO of Imagination Engines.

The court’s decision turned on three issues. The first was the meaning of the term “inventor” as applied to the UK’s 1977 Patents Act, which the court said is limited to a “natural person,” and that “no suggestion that inventor may be a machine” could be found in the relevant law. The second was whether Thaler had the right to file patent applications on the basis of his ownership of DABUS, which also failed on the same grounds – DABUS cannot be considered “an inventor” under UK law. Finally, the court addressed whether the Comptroller’s office was right to consider that the applications were withdrawn because Thaler did not identify anyone as the inventor of the inventions, which, again, was upheld on the grounds that UK law doesn’t consider DABUS a person.

The decision did note, however, that if Thaler had approached the matter differently – calling himself the inventor of the patents in question, and describing the AI as “a highly sophisticated tool” – the outcome may well have been different. Thaler, however, was rigorous in his claim that DABUS, not he, was the inventor. He has asserted that DABUS “is a sentient being,” according to a report from Bloomberg.

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The decision is squarely in line with jurisprudence elsewhere in the Western world. The US Copyright Office has said that human authorship is required for copyright to exist on a work, and no legislative or regulatory efforts are underway to change that state of affairs. EU copyright law, similarly, requires a “guiding human hand” in order to claim copyright over a work.

                     **Rite Aid hit with a five-year freeze on facial recognition**

Rite Aid has agreed to a five-year ban on using facial recognition technology for surveillance as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The decision follows charges by the FTC that the technology was misused, harming consumers. From 2012 to 2020, Rite Aid implemented AI-driven facial recognition to detect shoplifters. However, the FTC said the system wrongly identified specific customers as previous shoplifters and "disproportionately impacted people of color."

Rite Aid used AI-powered, face-scanning technology in hundreds of its stores to identify individuals on surveillance footage, aiming to reduce shoplifting and address other customer-related issues. The FTC said that due to the lack of proper safeguards and the technology's history of inaccuracies and racial bias, Rite Aid staff often wrongfully accused customers of theft.

“Rite Aid's reckless use of facial surveillance systems left its customers facing humiliation and other harms, and its order violations put consumers’ sensitive information at risk," Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a news release. “Today’s groundbreaking order makes clear that the Commission will be vigilant in protecting the public from unfair biometric surveillance and unfair data security practices.”

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According to the FTC, Rite Aid's system used facial recognition to scan customers as they entered the store, comparing their faces with an extensive database of individuals suspected or confirmed as shoplifters. If the system found a match, it alerted staff to monitor that shopper closely. The photo database was filled with low-quality images from grainy surveillance footage and cell phones, leading to unreliable matches. The problems with the pictures resulted in staff following customers or calling the police without witnessing any crime.

Federal officials also pointed out that Rite Aid did not inform its customers about the use of facial recognition technology and instructed its employees to keep its usage confidential from both customers and the media. The FTC claimed that Rite Aid collaborated with two unnamed companies to build its "persons of interest" database containing tens of thousands of images.

Rite Aid said that its deal with the FTC must be approved by the court overseeing its ongoing bankruptcy case. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in October.

"The allegations relate to a facial recognition technology pilot program the company deployed in a limited number of stores," the company said in a statement. "Rite Aid stopped using the technology in this small group of stores more than three years ago, before the FTC’s investigation regarding the Company’s use of the technology began."

The FTC ban exemplifies the decentralized nature of AI regulation in the US, said Kjell Carlsson, head of data science strategy and evangelism at Domino Data Lab.

“Unlike in the EU, where the EU AI Act promises consistent regulations backed by draconian fines focused on AI, in the US, companies face an evolving patchwork of regulations by federal agencies, state and municipal lawmakers, with comparatively minor penalties, mostly focused on the misuse of data rather than AI itself,” he added.

                                       **Making sense of genAI pricing in office apps**

Generative AI has the potential to boost workplace productivity, automating tasks such as drafting emails and providing meeting summaries. But deciding how much businesses should pay to access these tools can be a conundrum for software vendors.

“This is untested technology, both in terms of what it can do and how you can monetize it,” said Craig Roth, a research vice president at Gartner. “What you see is vendors experimenting: they’re trying [to balance] actually making revenue off of this with trying to negotiate some market positioning and competitive advantage.”

In the months since OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched, large language models (LLMs) have been applied to many software tools, with collaboration and productivity apps seen as a key use case. Common capabilities include automated note-taking during meetings, summarization of text chat and email transcripts, email draft generation, advanced document search, and even image generation for presentation slides.

Different pricing strategies have emerged for access to these features, with some vendors charging premium prices while others opt for lower costs in the hope of spurring uptake among business customers.

While it’s standard for software vendors to price similar services at different levels as they vie for market share and profitability, the relative novelty of generative AI brings some specific challenges. On one hand there’s the compute cost to process user queries and how quickly this cost might fall. Then there’s the question of what benefits these tools will actually provide to customers and, ultimately, how much organizations are willing to pay.

Altogether, settling on a dollar value means grappling with several unknowns. “It’s kind of a dance right now between the vendors and the customers to figure out what the right price point is,” said Roth.

                   **Apple and the wireless industry invite you aboard Qi2**

If you blinked during the prelude to Thanksgiving 2023, you might not have noticed the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announcement that the first wireless chargers to support Qi v.2.0 (and Apple’s MagSafe) are about to ship.

This matters to Apple watchers because many of the first products to appear will be compatible with Apple’s iPhone 15, as these are the first Qi2-certified smartphones. This should also be good news for busy mobile professionals who keep their iPhone on a wireless charging pad when at their desk.

That’s because Qi 2.0 includes support for Magnetic Power Profile (MPP), which is based on Apple’s MagSafe technology. It says that devices used with a compatible charger will clip magnetically into place when connected and means power will be distributed more efficiently.
Maybe one day for Android?
Android users needn't be upset — the standard is open to Android manufacturers and is likely to appear in some of their devices eventually. Who knows? One day you might even use a Pixel with a little Apple inside. (I wonder what Steve Jobs would have said about that.)

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“These certified Qi2 chargers provide smoother, faster charging that is more energy efficient, and offers wide interoperability,” explained WPC Executive Director Paul Struhsaker. “Plus, Qi2’s magnetic attachment means consumers will no longer have to fuss in trying to adjust the positioning of their devices to ensure perfect alignment between phone and charger.”

                     **Nvidia’s French offices raided for anticompetitive practices: Report**

France’s competition watchdog has raided the local offices of chipmaker Nvidia while investigating anticompetitive practices in the graphics cards sector with a focus on cloud computing.

While the competition watchdog did not confirm the identity of the entity being investigated or the practice in question, a report from The Wall Street Journal cited sources saying that the raids targeted Nvidia.

The watchdog, however, confirmed that the operation was a result of it trying to investigate the graphics cards sector as part of an expanded study to understand anticompetitive practices in the cloud computing sector. The study, according to the watchdog, was started in January 2022.

As products and services that use generative AI come to market, Nvidia has risen to prominence as the top chip supplier to large software vendors and cloud service providers — such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft, — could be among the top reasons for the watchdog’s interest in the chipmaker.  

In February, Nvidia announced plans to ship its DGX Cloud to Oracle, Google Cloud, and Microsoft. The DGX Cloud combines the company’s GPU-based compute systems called DGX Pods with an AI enterprise software stack.

The chipmaker blew past expectations for its most recent quarter and numbers disclosed showed that enterprise sales now constitute 76% of Nvidia’s total revenue. Experts and analysts also believe that Nvidia is “uniquely suited to benefit from the growth of AI in hardware.”

Nvidia’s rivals in the generative AI-processing silicon space include AMD, a startup named Ampere, and the cloud service provider themselvess, who are developing their own chips for supporting next-generation AI workloads.

Oracle’s recent $400 million investment into Ampere for generative AI workload-supporting chips also underlines the demand for such processors. Oracle has also agreed to pay over $100 million for buying such chips this month.

                           **Missing The A.I Run? This London Stock Could Jump 500%**

The last 3 tech stocks I covered in my articles went up over 300% because some of us saw the A.I run coming, well before ChatGPT went mainstream.

The good news is that the technology is still in its infancy, and there are countless opportunities to make big profits on A.I stocks if investors know what to buy.

One company here in the U.K which is starting to make headlines is RC 365 Holding (symbol: RCGH), a London Stock Exchange unicorn that is taking the markets by storm.

Since I called the stock a “Strong Buy” at 20 pence, it has gained more than 300% and still has room to go up.

The company’s groundbreaking use of artificial intelligence (AI), RC 365 is revolutionizing the way businesses operate in the digital era.

With stocks throughout the world soaring hundreds of percent in the last months, the AI race is on, and investors who miss out will surely regret it in the months to come.

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a transformative force across various sectors, and the finance industry is no exception. As businesses increasingly rely on data-driven decision-making, AI has become the driving force behind enhanced efficiency, intelligent automation, and unparalleled insights.

According to market forecasts, the global AI industry is poised to reach unprecedented heights, with a projected market value of over £10 trillion in the near future.

Investing in stocks like RCGH today could be like buying into Apple, Google or Microsoft decades ago.