Technology News for Tuesday 17th December 2024

1. NASA Sets Low Earth Orbit Goals and Objectives

Developed with input from a wide range of stakeholders, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Microgravity Strategy will guide the agency toward the next generation of continuous human presence in orbit, enable greater economic growth, and maintain international ...

2. Apple releases iOS 18.3 first developer beta for eligible iPhones: Details

Apple has released the first developer beta version of its upcoming iOS 18.3 update, just days after introducing iOS 18.2 that was packed with Apple Intelligence features. While Apple has not yet disclosed specific changes in the latest beta, ...

3. Vijay Kumar: John Scott Award for Robotics Advances

Among the honorees was Vijay Kumar, a professor and the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, who was recognized alongside robotics pioneers Daniela Rus of MIT and Takeo Kanade of Carnegie Mellon University. Endowed in 1815 ...

4. The 10 best video games of 2024, from Astro Bot to Balatro

RTE LifeStyle Journalist. In 2024, the gaming industry delivered some of the finest stories and innovations in the entertainment industry. And each month, we were treated ...

5. The First Step towards the Next Level AI Companion

Personalised data is stored in a secure space, carefully safeguarded by an encryption key that's managed by Knox Vault. That's the same trusted platform used to secure the most sensitive information on your smartphone, such as your biometric data.

6. TikTok Asks Supreme Court to Block Law Banning Its US Operations

The company and its Chinese parent invoked the First Amendment in urging the justices to step in before a Jan. 19 deadline to sell or be shut down.

7. Microsoft Announces Multilingual Contact Center Voice Agents

Microsoft has confirmed a new multilingual voice agent for its Dynamics 365 Contact Center. The voice agents are front-end, conversational autonomous agents that brands can customize in Copilot Studio to support 26 languages, including Chinese, ...

8. A Look Inside Huawei's Phone Shows How China's Chip Advance Has Stalled

An analysis of Huawei's latest series of smartphones, the Mate 70, found chips that showed little progress from those used in last year's devices.

9. SoundCloud Launches New Artist Subscription Plan for $3.25 per Month

“That's why we created the Artist plan—to provide emerging musicians with pro-level tools and distribution at an affordable price. As the only creator platform in music that directly connects artists with fans, we're making it even easier for artists to ...

10. Brazilian digital lender Nubank invests $150 million in Tyme Group

Tyme Group says it achieves unicorn status with $1.5 billion valuation · TymeBank aims to be top three retail bank in South Africa by 2027 · Nubank said Tyme's series D funding round totalled $250 million.

11. Programme launched to combat impacts of gambling-like games

The line between gaming and gambling is becoming increasingly blurred thanks to in game loot boxes which are designed to mimic gambling, according to the Problem Gambling Foundation. A new programme has been launched in an effort to combat the negative ...

12. This is how chatbots like ChatGPT work

ChatGPT, operated by OpenAI, is an artificial intelligence chatbot like Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, or Meta AI. These chatbots use a type of AI called a “large language model.” They understand text and generate words to sound human.