Archives February 2023

Market research company TrendForce (opens in new tab) has shared its prediction for DRAM manufacturing in the coming year, and it looks like servers may just tip the scales to become the most important sector.

The firm reckons that server DRAM will account for 37.6% of the total bit output for 2023, placing it only just ahead of smartphones at 36.8%. While the difference may not seem significant, the significance really lies in the huge growth in the server market.

AIs are taking over tech at the moment. They’re no longer just an assistant in our phones and smart speakers and, after making search engines talkative’ and winning photography competitions, they’re going to be Spotify DJs now, too.

Spotify – one of the world’s best music streaming services – has just unveiled its new OpenAI tech-powered DJ feature (the same team behind ChatGPT) that will act like the real thing , albeit with your own personalized playlist.

Microsoft’s new ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine is evolving fast – it’s now made the leap to Android and iOS smartphones with new mobile apps that also deliver voice search.

The new apps, which are available today, bring Bing’s new AI chat powers onto our phones for the first time. Assuming your account has access to the new search engine, you’ll be able to summon its chat assistant by tapping the Bing icon at the bottom of your screen.

AI chatbots are likely to face scrutiny in the long-discussed Online Safety Bill. 

Lord Stephen Parkinson, a junior Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, was the one confirming the plans to include AI-generated content into the scope of the proposed legislation.

Google has begun work on making Android more secure at the firmware level, targeting processors on systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) that target dedicated tasks such as mobile phone functionality, media playback and encoding, and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Per BleepingComputer (opens in new tab), the tech giant is starting to take notice of the fact that, “over the last decade”, firmware vulnerabilities on secondary processors have been become high-priority targets for security researchers and academic papers in the field of computer science.

AMD executives David Wang and Rick Bergman have confirmed that we’ll be seeing a lot more AI in the next generation of graphics cards from the tech giant, which will be built on AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture.

In a recent interview with the Japanese gaming website 4gamer, the AMD execs detailed some of what we can expect from RDNA 4. Naturally, front and center was confirmation that we’ll be seeing the second iteration of Team Red’s AI Accelerator cores (similar to Nvidia’s Tensor cores), which were first introduced in the current-gen RDNA 3 GPUs – such as the excellent Radeon RX 7900 XTX, currently the best AMD graphics card on the market.

Microsoft will implement price increases for developer access to the Bing Search Application Program Interface (API) across all markets from May 2023.

Announcing the change in a blog post (opens in new tab) (via The Register (opens in new tab)), Microsoft have said that existing price plans will see increases from May 1, 2023. Bizarrely, the same statement says that, from the same date, “you’ll be charged the new price for all Microsoft Bing APIs.”

Unknown hackers have reportedly managed to steal login information for data centers used by some of the world’s biggest tech and banking companies, researchers have claimed.

Cybersecurity researchers from Resecurity recently reported how a threat actor breached GDS Holdings and ST Telemedia Global Data Centers – two of the largest third-party data center companies in Asia. Between them, these providers cover some of the world’s biggest brands, including Apple, Amazon, BMW, Goldman Sachs, and others. 

Sustainability has become important for businesses across the world to consider and has been an especially bright focal point in the technology industry. Sustainable business practices are not only creating a healthier world (which we all want), but it’s key to connecting with customers in meaningful ways. Climate change is the #2 cultural concern for Millennials and Gen Z consumers, according to the Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which means it must be top of mind for every company – and social purpose is one of the main drivers that consumers use when evaluating a brand’s reputation.

So unsurprisingly, sustainability is now an everyday topic, and was a huge focus for Samsung at Integrated Systems Europe this year, where we showed off the latest and greatest in digital signage. It was the right audience to talk sustainability, since it was the biggest ISE ever, with over 58 thousand people coming from 155 countries. 

The PSVR 2 launches today and it’s actually in stock – a shocking twist for anyone who struggled for months to buy a PS5 when availability was so low. Perhaps you’ve had a read of our PSVR 2 review and are now convinced to try out this powerful and premium console-based virtual reality headset. If so, here’s where to buy the PlayStation VR 2.

Right now, the PlayStation VR 2 is listed for $549.99 / £529.99 / AU$879.95 and it’s exclusively available through the official PlayStation Direct Store (opens in new tab) during this early launch window. It’s not clear when this exclusivity period ends or when it will be available at other retailers in these regions. For the money, you get the PSVR 2 headset, PSVR 2 Sense controllers and a pair of stereo headphones.