Science and technology

Fans of the critically acclaimed video game series ‘ Grand Theft Auto (GTA) ‘ got overjoyed after a report stating that the highly anticipated sixth game ‘ GTA 6 ‘ was in the final stages of production went viral on social media. Watch ARY News live on  live.arynews.tv   The last game in the franchise, ‘ GTA 5 ‘, was released just over a decade ago. Rockstar Games, its production company, raised excitement when it announced that ‘ GTA 6 ‘ was in development. Fans got a taste of what was to come when its trailer was released on December 4, 2023. The first look revealed that Rockstar Games is releasing the project in 2025. The positive reviews reflected the eagerness for a new game. It is pertinent to mention that ‘ GTA 6 ‘ trailer is the second most-watched video game trailer of all time.  Now, the upcoming project made news after the US news agency Bloomberg published a report regarding its production. The news outlet reported that Rockstar’s Head of Publishing Jenn Kolbe sen

In a major development, Google Chrome for Android will soon allow copying and saving frames from videos.  Google Chrome for Desktop/PC (Mac and Windows) allows you to copy a frame from a video to the clipboard or save it on your device, which makes it easier for you to grab frames from videos and use them for various purposes, such as sharing it with someone or using it in a project. All you have to do to use this functionality is right-click on a video and select the ‘Copy video frame’ or ‘Save video frame as’ options. Now, Google seems to be working on bringing the same functionality to Google Chrome for Android. In a post on X/Twitter, @Leopeva64 reports that a commit in Gerrit reveals that Google is working on equipping Google Chrome for Android with the ability to copy or save frames from videos. When Google rolls out this feature, Chrome for Android could show ‘Copy video frame’ or ‘Save video frame as’ options when you long-press on a video, allowing you to copy or save a

SAN FRANCISCO: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday slammed “completely unacceptable” errors by its Gemini AI app, after gaffes such as images of ethnically diverse World War II Nazi troops forced it to stop users from creating pictures of people. The controversy emerged within weeks of Google’s high-profile rebranding of its ChatGPT-style AI to “Gemini”, giving the app unprecedented prominence in its products as it competes with OpenAI and its backer Microsoft. Social media users mocked and criticized Google for the historically inaccurate Gemini-generated images, such as US senators from the 1800s that were ethnically diverse and included women. “I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app,” Pichai wrote in a letter to staff, which was published by the news website Semafor. “I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias — to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.” A Google spoke

Apple opens new tab has canceled work on its electric car, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday, a decade after the iPhone maker kicked off the project. Shares of the company were up 0.7% in afternoon trading, having pared some losses from earlier in the trading day. Several employees working on the electric car project will be shifted to the firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the development. “If it is true, Apple will put more focus on GenAI and that should give investors more optimism about the company’s efforts and ability to compete at a platform level on AI,” said Ben Bajarin, chief executive of consulting firm Creative Strategies. Apple has so far held back from any big moves in AI, in stark contrast to other tech giants such as Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, which have first-mover advantage in incorporating the breakthrough technology. Apple declined

Bitcoin hit a two-year high on Tuesday, on track for its biggest two-day rally this year, on signs large players were buying the cryptocurrency, while smaller rival ether topped $3,200 for the first time since 2022. Bitcoin has rallied more than 10% in two sessions, helped by Monday’s disclosure from crypto investor and software firm MicroStrategy (MSTR.O) that it had recently purchased about 3,000 bitcoins for an outlay of $155 million. The original and largest cryptocurrency by market value has also been buoyed recently by the approval of bitcoin-owning exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States. On Monday, trading volumes in several of the funds spiked and crypto-linked firms rallied too, in contrast to nervous broader markets. Bitcoin was last up 4.7% at $57,232, while ether reached as high as $3,290, its highest since April 2022. “There’s only so much supply … but the demand unleashed by the U.S. spot ETFs seems to be relentless,” said Justin d’Anethan, head of partner

OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss parts of the New York Times copyright lawsuit against it, arguing that the newspaper “hacked” its chatbot ChatGPT and other artificial-intelligence systems to generate misleading evidence for the case. OpenAI said in a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that the Times caused the technology to reproduce its material through “deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI’s terms of use.” “The allegations in the Times’s complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards,” OpenAI said. “The truth, which will come out in the course of this case, is that the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products.” Representatives for the New York Times and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing. The Times sued OpenAI and its largest financial backer Microsoft in December, accusing them of using millions of its articles without permission to train chatbots to provide information to users. The

Smartwatches may not only help count steps and sleep but can also offer mental health clinicians valuable information about depression symptoms, according to a new study. Wearable technology is part of a focus on precision medicine that will allow clinicians to better tailor treatment for individual patients, said Joshua Curtiss, Assistant Professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University, US. “The purpose of this type of research was to figure out if we can use passive sensor data to predict the things we care about — to see if it is associated with changes in depression severity or symptom severity,” Curtiss said. “It showed the very individualised ways depression manifests in people,” he said, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. For the study, the team took data from anonymised patients at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who wore the Empatica E3 wristband to track sleep, acceleration and movement, heart rate variability and other physi

With every passing day, it seems like it is getting harder to trust what you see — and hear — on the internet. Deepfakes and doctored audio have become easier to create with the press of a button. New  research by three School of Information students  and alums will make it easy to determine the authenticity of an audio clip.  Romit Barua, Gautham Koorma, and Sarah Barrington (all MIMS ’23) first presented their research on voice cloning as their  final project  for the Master of Information Management and Systems degree program. Barrington is now a Ph.D. student at the I School. Working with Professor Hany Farid, the team looked into different techniques for differentiating a real from a cloned voice designed to impersonate a specific person. “When this team first approached me in early Spring of 2022, I told them not to worry about deepfake audio because voice cloning was just not very good and it would be a while before we had to worry about it. I was wrong, and a fe

US State Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature has passed legislation that would ban anyone under age 16 from social media platforms in a move that supporters have said would protect young people from online risks to their mental health. The measure, which goes to the desk of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis after being passed by lawmakers on Thursday, would require social media platforms to terminate the accounts of people under 16 and use a third-party verification system to screen out those who are underage. DeSantis, who last month expressed concern about the bill’s potential infringement on privacy rights, told reporters on Friday that he had yet to review its final version. DeSantis said he believes social media is harmful for children but that parents “could supervise” and he was wary of a policy that would “overrule” parents. “I think you’ve got to strike that proper balance when you’re looking at these things,” DeSantis said. The measure was passed by Florida House

A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the south pole of the moon on Thursday, the first US touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector. The uncrewed six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines’ (LUNR.O), opens new tab mission operations center in Houston. The landing capped a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a problem surfaced with the spacecraft’s autonomous navigation system that required engineers on the ground to employ an untested work-around at the 11th hour. It also took some time after an anticipated radio blackout to re-establish communications with the spacecraft and determine its fate some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth. When contact was finally renewed, the signal was faint, confirming that the land

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday directed the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to restore social media platform X services across Pakistan, ARY News reported. The order was issued by the SHC bench, headed by SHC Chief Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, on a petition against the “unconstitutional” internet outages across the country in recent days. During today’s hearing, the chief justice questioned on whose directions was X services suspended. The court must ask PTA to disclose who issued them directives to suspend social media site X,” the counsel replied. On Wednesday, the court summoned report from PTA for suspending internet services on election day and issued notice to federal government. Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, continues to remain inaccessible to users in Pakistan after internet watchdog groups started to report outages on Saturday. NetBlocks, an organisation that monitors accessibility issues on the internet, On February 17

Caretaker Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication, Dr Umar Saif said that IT exports in January witnessed an increase of 39.4 per cent to $265 million compared to $190 million in the same month of the last fiscal year. “Pakistan’s IT industry continues to grow and sets new records. IT exports in January are up by 39.4 per cent to $265 million, compared to $190 million in the same month in 2023,” the minister posted on X. Additionally, the minister disclosed that IT exports during the first seven months of the current fiscal year (July-January) reached $1.7 billion, marking a 13 per cent increase from $1.5 billion in the corresponding period of the last year. During the months under review, the export of computer services grew by 10.32 per cent as it surged from US $1,064.579 million last year to US $1,174.481 million during July-December 2023-24. Among the computer services, the exports of software consultancy services witnessed a nominal decrease of 180 per cent

The Biden administration is turning up the heat on China’s top sanctioned chipmaker by cutting off its most advanced factory from more American imports after it produced a sophisticated chip for Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro phone, three people familiar with the matter said. Late last year, the Commerce Department sent dozens of letters to U.S. suppliers to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), suspending permission to sell to its most advanced plant, said two people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. While many companies had already stopped selling to SMIC South, as the unit is known, the letters halted millions of dollars worth of shipments of chipmaking materials and parts from at least one supplier, Entegris, one of the people said. Reuters found no evidence that Entegris had violated any U.S. laws or regulations. Entegris said it made the shipments in accordance with a valid export lice

Google on Wednesday released Gemma, new artificial intelligence (AI) models that outside developers potentially can fashion as their own, following a similar move by Meta Platforms and others. The Alphabet subsidiary said individuals and businesses can build AI software based on its new family of “open models” called Gemma, for free. The company is making key technical data such as what are called model weights publicly available, it said. Introducing Gemma: a family of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models for developers and researchers to build with AI. We’re also releasing tools to support innovation and collaboration – as well as to guide responsible use. Get started now. → https://t.co/nsoFqfHffY pic.twitter.com/PRNIndgU4S — Google DeepMind (@GoogleDeepMind) February 21, 2024 The move may attract software engineers to build on Google’s technology and encourage usage of its newly profitable cloud division. The models are “optimized” for Google Cloud, where first-tim

The first human patient implanted with a brain-chip from Neuralink appears to have fully recovered and is able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts, the startup’s founder Elon Musk said late on Monday. “Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of. Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking,” Musk said in a Spaces event on social media platform X. Musk said Neuralink was now trying to get as many mouse button clicks as possible from the patient. Neuralink did not immediately reply to Reuters’ request for further details. The firm successfully implanted a chip on its first human patient last month, after receiving approval for human trial recruitment in September. The study uses a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink has said, adding that the initial goal is to enable people to control

For biofuels to compete with petroleum, biorefinery operations must be designed to better utilize lignin. Lignin is one of the main components of plant cell walls. It provides plants with greater structural integrity and resiliency from microbial attacks. However, these natural properties of lignin also make it difficult to extract and utilize from the plant matter, also known as biomass. “Lignin utilization is the gateway to making what you want out of biomass in the most economical and environmentally friendly way possible,” said UC Riverside associate research professor Charles Cai. “Designing a process that can better utilize both the lignin and sugars found in biomass is one of the most exciting technical challenges in this field.” To overcome the lignin hurdle, Cai invented CELF, which stands for co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation. It is an innovative biomass pretreatment technology. “CELF uses tetrahydrofuran or THF to supplement water and dilute acid during b

After an outage of 39 hours, the services of the popular micro-blogging website X, formerly known as Twitter, have been successfully restored in Pakistan. The outage, which started at 9 p.m. on Saturday, impacted users who reported difficulties accessing tweets and new posts. Attempts to load the site resulted in a ‘this site can’t be reached’ notification. Downdetector.pk, a real-time internet and social media outage monitoring service, recorded at least 185 reports of X outages by 9:01 p.m., with the number increasing to 239 by 9:24 p.m. Users took to social media to express their frustration during the downtime. Read more: X (Twitter) services down for users globally Cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks also confirmed the shutdown of X in Pakistan. This incident adds to a series of recent internet service disruptions, including social media sites, in the country. The situation is particularly noteworthy given the ongoing context of the 2024 general elections, where most services h

TOKYO:  Nintendo (7974.T), opens new tab shares fell 6% on Monday after reports by games media and Bloomberg that its next-generation console will be delayed until early 2025 from later this year. While Nintendo has not commented on plans for a successor device beyond saying that it is always working on new hardware and software, the Kyoto-based gaming firm is widely expected to be planning to launch a new device to succeed its aging Switch console. The company raised the full-year sales forecast for the Switch earlier this month as the hybrid home-portable device continues to attract consumers even as it nears its eighth year on the market. Read more: Nintendo Indie World showcase airing today “We want to maintain the momentum of the Switch business,” Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told an earnings briefing at the time. The videogame company reported earnings earlier this month, and said it now expects to sell 15.5 million Switch consoles through the year ending in Mar

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan earned US $1,454.881 million by providing different Information Technology (IT) services to various countries during the first six months of the current fiscal year 2023-24, ARY News reported  This shows a growth of 8.98 per cent as compared with the US $1,334.969 million earned through the provision of services during the corresponding months of the last fiscal year 2022-23, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported. During the months under review, the export of computer services grew by 10.32 per cent as it surged from US $1,064.579 million last year to US $1,174.481 million during July-December 2023-24. Among the computer services, the exports of software consultancy services witnessed a nominal decrease of 180 per cent, from US $3.394 million to US $3.333 million this year while the export of hardware consultancy services surged by 3.401 per cent, from US $391.570 million to US $404.875 million. The export of repair and maintenance services however d

TOKYO: Japan’s space agency toasted a successful blast-off for its new flagship rocket on Saturday, making it third time lucky after years of delays and two previous failed attempts. The next-generation H3 has been mooted as a rival to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and could one day deliver cargo to bases on the Moon. “I’ve been in the space industry for a long time, but I’ve never felt so happy before, and I’ve never felt so relieved,” said Hiroshi Yamakawa, president of space agency JAXA. The latest launch follows Japan’s successful landing last month of an unmanned probe on the Moon — albeit at a wonky angle — making it just the fifth country to land a craft on the lunar surface. The H3 launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan at 9:22 am (0022 GMT). Cheers and applause could be heard from the JAXA control centre after the agency’s live stream announced the H3’s engines had successfully burned, meaning the rocket had made it into orbit. Developed jointly by JAXA a

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E, said it was testing a text-to-video model called Sora that would allow users to create realistic videos with a simple prompt. Watch ARY News live on  live.arynews.tv The Microsoft-backed company said the new platform was currently being tested but released a few videos of what it said was already possible, with the accompanying input made to generate the video. “Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt,” OpenAI said in a blog post. The model could also take an existing still image and generate a video from it, the company said. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X said the company was “offering access to a limited number of creators” in a testing phase. He also invited users to suggest prompts on X, the convincing results of which he posted on the platform a few moments later. These included a short video of two golden retrievers podcasting on a mountain. An

Video game maker Activision Blizzard has been hit with a U.S. lawsuit claiming it restricts competition for organized gaming involving its flagship franchise “Call of Duty.” Professional gamers Hector Rodriguez and Seth Abner said in an antitrust lawsuit, opens new tab filed in Los Angeles federal court on Thursday that Activision is unlawfully monopolizing the lucrative market for Call of Duty leagues and tournaments. Call of Duty, a first-person-shooter game first introduced in 2003, is one of the industry’s all-time best sellers and helped propel Activision to billions of dollars in annual revenue, the lawsuit said. Activision said in a statement that it will “strongly defend against these claims, which have no basis in fact or in law.” Activision said it refused a pre-lawsuit demand from the plaintiffs for “tens of millions of dollars.” Microsoft acquired Activision last year for $69 billion, in a deal that still faces U.S. Federal Trade Commission scrutiny. Activision in 201

Technology company Nokia on Wednesday unveiled an AI-powered tool that generates messages for industrial workers, including warnings about faulty machinery based on real-time data and recommended ways to boost factory output. The tool, “MX Workmate”, will expand on Nokia’s existing communications technology used by industrial clients by harnessing generative AI large language models (LLMs) to write human-like text, the company said in a statement. These could include early warnings about machine failure along with recommended actions for repairs, solutions to boost production quality and rates, or dealing with accidents at factories, Stephane Daeuble, Head of Enterprise Solutions Marketing at Nokia, told Reuters. The Finland-based gear maker already supplies 4G and 5G technology that allows in-house communications or helps industrial companies connect to data from machine sensors, among other uses. “Now the idea is we have an assistant that’s there to help the worker make sense of

Japan’s Sony slashed the full-year sales forecast for its PlayStation 5 console on Wednesday and said it plans to list its financial business next year as it focuses on entertainment and image sensors. Sony cut its PS5 sales forecast for the year ending March to 21 million units, from 25 million units previously, after weaker-than-expected sales over the year-end shopping season. The company said it expects a gradual decline in unit sales from the next financial year and that it does not plan to release any major franchise titles in the coming fiscal year. Sony, which in 2023 said it was examining a partial spin-off of its financial business, said it plans to list Sony Financial Group in October 2025 and retain a stake of just under 20%. The company’s operating profit in the October-December quarter jumped 10% to 463.3 billion yen ($3.08 billion), beating an average estimate of 428 billion yen from 11 analysts polled by LSEG, as strong performance by the financial, movies and musi

A robotic moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was set for launch early on Wednesday on a NASA mission to conduct the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned vehicle. The company’s Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, was due for liftoff shortly before 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Forecasts called for a 95% chance of favorable weather conditions. The launch comes a month after the lunar lander of another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being placed in orbit on Jan. 8 by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight. The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which was also on a NASA mission, marked the third time a private company had been unable to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, following ill-fated effort

Five people were rescued after an accident in Canada thanks to the Car Crash detection feature in an Apple Watch. Watch ARY News live on  live.arynews.tv Apple Computers had introduced the Car Crash detection feature in iPhone Apple Watch in 2022. A sensor in the device alerts emergency services about the mishaps. A report by the United States news agency KTLA 5 stated that a car, carrying five people, crashed into a tree on 15 Freeway at Jurupa Avenue in Ontario, San Bernardino.  The feature informed the California Highway Patrol (CHP). An offical told media that responders found a single vehicle crashed into a tree. The affected passengers were transported to medical centre for treatment as quickly as possible. Two passengers sustained injuries.  It is not the first time people have been rescue because of the technology. A couple got rescued after a car accident. It is pertinent to mention that The feature is compatible in iPhone 14 series, iPhone 15 series, Apple Watch 8, A