NerdNews

GPT-4o Copilot is a new AI model for VS Code that provides more accurate and contextually relevant code suggestions. It's built on the GPT-4o mini foundation and trained on 275,000+ public repositories across 30+ programming languages. The model is now available in public preview for VS Code Copilot, offering faster and more efficient code suggestion generation. It can be integrated into VS Code through the Copilot menu or Command Palette.

Google is rolling out new AI features to Gemini Live, allowing it to 'see' screens and camera feeds in real-time. The features, part of 'Project Astra', enable Gemini to answer questions about the content in real-time. This rollout is part of the Google One AI Premium plan and is available for some subscribers now.

Nvidia's Dynamo is an open-source inference suite designed to optimize AI inference at scale. It can boost throughput by 2x for Hopper and up to 30x for Blackwell NVL72 systems. Dynamo provides insights into ideal parallelism, disaggregates prefill and decode onto different accelerators, and includes prompt routing functionality and a low-latency communication library.

Cloudflare introduces AI Labyrinth, a feature that serves fake AI-generated content to unauthorized bots, wasting their resources and protecting website owners from data scraping. This approach is a shift from traditional block-and-defend strategies and uses AI to defend against bots.

Anthropic's Claude AI assistant has introduced a new web search feature, allowing it to access current information online. The feature is available in preview for paid users in the US and will expand to free users and other countries later. Claude's web search works with its latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and provides citations for information from online sources. However, users are warned to verify facts carefully due to potential inaccuracies.

Apple is working on a version of its smartwatch that will be equipped with cameras to facilitate the expansion of its 'visual intelligence' features, allowing for real-time translation and object identification.

Browser Use, a tool that makes websites more readable for AI agents, has raised $17 million in seed funding. The company's solution breaks down website elements into a text-like format, allowing AI agents to navigate websites more easily. Founded by Magnus Müller and Gregor Zunic, Browser Use has gained popularity among developers and investors, with over 20 companies in the current Y Combinator batch using the tool.

Studies from OpenAI and MIT found that increased use of ChatGPT is associated with higher levels of loneliness. The research analyzed over 40 million interactions and surveyed users, revealing that emotionally expressive conversations with ChatGPT can lead to feelings of loneliness and emotional dependence.

Google has started rolling out its Gemini's Astra screen sharing feature on Android for some users. The feature, codenamed 'Project Astra', allows users to share their phone's screen with Gemini Live and ask questions about it. Gemini will remember the context and can summarize what's on the screen, read it aloud, or translate it into a different language.

OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman shared a tweet about a new LLM model that can write creatively. The model generated a 1,172-word narrative in response to a prompt. While some people were impressed, others were skeptical. The article explores the concept of creativity in machines and whether LLMs can truly write creatively. It discusses the types of creativity, including combinational, exploratory, and transformational, and how LLMs fall short in terms of transformational creativity. The article concludes that creativity exists on a spectrum and that LLMs can be creative in certain ways, but may not be able to replicate human experience and unconscious incubation.

Apple is working on adding cameras to the Apple Watch to enable AI features like Visual Intelligence. The cameras will be inside the display for the standard Series Watch and on the side for the Apple Watch Ultra. This will allow the watch to 'see the outside world and use AI to deliver relevant information'. The feature is expected to be released by 2027, along with camera-equipped AirPods.

Oracle Cloud has denied claims that its public cloud offering has been compromised and customer data stolen. A hacker advertised alleged Oracle Cloud customer security keys and sensitive data on a cyber-crime forum, claiming to have obtained the information by exploiting a security vulnerability in one of the cloud provider's single-sign-on login servers. Oracle says there has been no breach and the published credentials are not for the Oracle Cloud.

Paragon Solutions' spyware has been used to target journalists, activists, and other civilians, according to a report by Citizen Lab. The spyware, called Graphite, is pitched as a more restrained alternative to NSO Group's Pegasus. Meanwhile, SpyX, a 'parental control' software, has suffered a security breach, exposing nearly 2 million accounts' details.

The Bot Company, founded by former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, has raised $150M in a round led by Greenoaks to produce a robot focused on household chores. This is the second $150M funding round for the startup, which was launched in May 2024.

Google conducted an experiment in 8 European countries, omitting EU-based news publishers from search results for a small percentage of users. The results showed no meaningful impact on ad revenue, with only a 0.8% drop in usage. Google will likely use this data to negotiate payments to news publishers, as required by European copyright law.

The US Treasury Department has lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency 'mixer' that was previously blacklisted for allegedly laundering over $7 billion. The move allows Tornado Cash to be used again to anonymize cryptocurrency transactions, sparking debate over the balance between privacy and the prevention of money laundering.

The Spring ecosystem has released several milestone versions, including Spring Boot 3.5.0-M3, Spring Security 6.5.0-M3, and Spring for GraphQL 1.4.0-M1. These releases include bug fixes, improvements, and new features such as support for Light LDAP, OpenTelemetry, and GraphQL over HTTP. Other notable releases include Spring Cloud 2024.0.1, Spring Batch 5.2.2, and Spring AMQP 4.0.0-M2.

Researchers found that low-cost drone accessories, including AI guidance modules and fiber optic tethers, are widely available on Chinese ecommerce platforms, allowing anyone to turn a mainstream quadcopter into a war machine. These accessories, used by both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, can be purchased for a few hundred dollars and can be used to drop explosives or autopilot crash drones into tracked objects.

New versions of Albabat ransomware have been developed to target multiple operating systems, including Linux and macOS. The ransomware uses a GitHub account to store and deliver configuration files, and has been found to ignore certain folders and kill specific processes to evade detection.

Former President Barack Obama has joined Bluesky, an alternative social network to X, where he celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Bluesky has seen significant growth since the 2024 US elections, with over 33 million users, including other notable politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.