Tech News This Week #21 | NF World Latest News
Apple’s Vision Pro | Sandisk Professional | Cowin Data Breach | Bing Image Editor | Meta’s Music Gen – Tech News This Week
Check out the Top 5 Interesting Tech News this Week below in the NF World Latest News Section. In this section, you can read the weekly summary of Gadgets, Space and Science-related Tech News.
Introducing Apple’s Vision Pro: The Ultimate Mixed-Reality Headset for Immersive AR/VR Experiences
Apple has recently unveiled its highly anticipated mixed-reality headset, named ‘Vision Pro,’ marking the company’s entry into the augmented reality (AR) market. While primarily positioned as an AR device, the headset seamlessly transitions between AR and virtual reality (VR) modes through a dial.
Distinguishing itself from other AR headsets, Vision Pro eliminates the need for a physical controller by leveraging the wearer’s eyes and hands to navigate the interface. Users can effortlessly scroll through rows of icons simply by looking at them and executing actions like tapping to select and flicking to scroll. The headset also supports voice commands via Siri and offers compatibility with Bluetooth accessories, enabling wearers to access Mac content while using the device.
With its innovative ‘Eyesight’ system, the headset can even display the wearer’s eyes. In full VR mode, a glow on the headset’s screen indicates that the user is unable to perceive their surroundings. Apple boasts that the Vision Pro showcases the real world in vivid colours and can project 3D objects, such as apps and windows, seamlessly into the wearer’s environment.
Of significant importance are the immersive view and spatial audio experience that the headset provides. Thanks to its panoramic setup, users can enjoy iOS applications, gaming, and streaming content in a truly immersive manner, akin to having a personal IMAX theatre. During the unveiling event, Apple demonstrated how Vision Pro can showcase apps and allow users to view Apple TV content, showcasing its vast potential.
With the introduction of Vision Pro, Apple aims to redefine the way users interact with AR and VR technologies, offering a unique and captivating experience that combines the real and virtual worlds seamlessly.
Sandisk Professional Series Unveils New Range of Products for Content Creators in India
Sandisk has launched an array of products in India as part of the Sandisk Professional series, catering specifically to content creators who handle vast amounts of data. Let’s take a closer look at these newly unveiled products designed to enhance productivity while on the move.
SanDisk Professional Pro-G40 SSD
The SanDisk Professional Pro-G40 is a robust SSD with an impressive IP68 rating, offering read speeds of up to 2700MB/s and write speeds of up to 1900MB/s. It boasts compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2, and its enclosure boasts an impressive 1800 kg crush resistance and three-meter drop resistance. Starting at Rs 34,999, this SSD comes with a five-year warranty.
SanDisk Professional G-RAID Shuttle SSD
The Sandisk G-RAID Shuttle is a portable eight-bay hardware RAID SSD that supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C interfaces. It provides up to 32TB of storage capacity, making it ideal for content creators dealing with large data transfers. With read rates of up to 2800MB/s via Thunderbolt 3, users can daisy chain up to five additional devices. Starting at Rs 3,99,999, this SSD also comes with a five-year warranty.
SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE Hard Drive
The SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE Enterprise-Class Desktop Hard Drive features a USB-C interface and is available in various storage capacities, including 4TB, 6TB, 12TB, 18TB, and 22TB. The 22TB version of the hard drive achieves read and write speeds of up to 280MB/s. With a three-year warranty, prices for this hard drive start at Rs 19,999.
SanDisk Professional Pro-Dock 4
In addition to storage solutions, Sandisk has introduced the Pro-Dock 4, a four-bay reader docking station that enables quick connectivity with drives, displays, A/V devices, and readers. It also supports up to four different SanDisk Professional Pro-Reader devices, which can be attached to DIT cars and offer transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps. Priced at Rs 34,999, the SanDisk Professional Pro-Dock 4 is a versatile accessory for content creators.
These new additions to the Sandisk Professional series provide content creators with efficient and reliable tools to handle extensive data requirements while maintaining high-performance standards.
Government Investigates Alleged Data Leak on CoWIN Portal: Sensitive Information of Indian Citizens Exposed
The Indian government has launched an investigation into an automated account on the messaging platform Telegram that allegedly shared sensitive personal information of Indian citizens who registered on the CoWIN portal for their Covid-19 vaccination. The leaked data included Aadhaar and passport numbers of individuals, including high-profile politicians, senior bureaucrats, and regular citizens.
Officials from the Electronics and IT Ministry have confirmed that they are looking into the matter to determine the source of the leak and whether the data has been accessed by unauthorized individuals. The Telegram account in question exposed the personal details of individuals when their CoWIN portal registration phone numbers were messaged to the automated account, known as a bot.
The leaked information could potentially impact more than 100 million individuals, including over 40 million children between the ages of 12 and 14 and over 370 million people above the age of 45, a significant portion of whom are senior citizens.
The Telegram bot displayed the name of the person, the government ID used for vaccination, and the vaccination location. Additionally, it revealed all individuals registered to CoWIN using the same phone number, as the portal allows multiple accounts to be created under one number.
Reports suggest that the leaked information included personal details of Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Raut and Derek O’Brien, as well as former Union Minister P Chidambaram, among others.
Previously, the CEO of the National Health Authority (NHA), RS Sharma, claimed that CoWIN had a robust security infrastructure and had not experienced any breaches. However, there has been no response from Sharma regarding the alleged data breach.
Following media reports about the bot’s existence and functioning, it became inactive on Monday morning, with a message in a corresponding group stating that the Aadhaar and number search mode was unavailable.
The Indian government’s investigation aims to identify the root cause of the leak and ensure the security of citizens’ personal information on the CoWIN portal.
Microsoft Unveils Upgraded Bing and Microsoft Edge: AI-Powered Enhancements for a Better Web Experience
In February, Microsoft made an exciting announcement about the enhanced capabilities of Bing and Microsoft Edge, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Positioned as “your copilot for the web,” the upgraded platform promises improved search results, comprehensive answers, an enhanced chat experience, and content creation capabilities. Microsoft emphasized that Bing is revolutionizing the search experience with over 100 million chats conducted.
Bing chat offers various applications, ranging from refining responses to intricate queries to providing entertainment and creative inspiration. Taking the chat experience to the next level, Microsoft introduced Bing Image Creator, making the new Bing more visually oriented. Additionally, the company introduced AI-powered visual Stories and updated Knowledge Cards for the new Bing and Edge preview.
With these advancements, users can expect a more engaging and interactive search experience. The incorporation of AI technology enables Bing and Edge to deliver comprehensive answers and visual content, catering to diverse user needs. Whether users seek information, entertainment, or inspiration, the new Bing and Edge strive to provide a seamless and enriched web browsing experience.
Meta’s Audiocraft Launches MusicGen: An Open-Source AI Model for Generating Unique Music
Meta’s Audiocraft research team has introduced MusicGen, an open-source deep-learning language model designed to generate new music based on text prompts. This model, similar to Google’s MusicLM, underwent training on 20,000 hours of licensed music data. MusicGen is also capable of aligning with existing songs and can incorporate melody inputs to create unique compositions.
A demo of MusicGen is available on Facebook’s Hugging Face AI site, allowing users to describe their preferred music genre and style. Users can even “condition” their selection by incorporating a pre-existing song, specifying a particular portion of the track. Once the generate button is clicked, the demo produces a high-quality music sample up to 12 seconds in length. The process typically takes around 160 seconds.
To train MusicGen, the Audiocraft team utilized 20,000 hours of licensed music data, including their dataset of 10,000 high-quality tracks, as well as tracks from Shutterstock and Pond5. To streamline processing, they employed Meta’s 32Khz EnCodec audio tokenizer, which generated smaller music chunks for simultaneous processing.
According to Ahsen Khaliq, an ML Engineer at Hugging Face, MusicGen differs from MusicLM in that it does not require a self-supervised semantic representation and operates with only 50 auto-regressive steps per second of audio.
MusicGen is available in four different model sizes, with the largest offering the capability to generate more intricate and complex music. It is recommended to have a GPU with at least 16GB of RAM for local model execution.
Check out our blog New Facts World and follow us on Instagram for more exciting tech news.
