Technology
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Rolling blackouts plague Iran and some suspect bitcoin mining may have a role in the outages
Iran’s capital and outlying provinces have faced rolling power blackouts for weeks in October and November, with electricity cuts disrupting people’s lives and businesses. Iran economy has been hobbled for years by international sanctions over its advancing nuclear program. The country's fuel reserves have plummeted, with the government selling off more to cover budget shortfalls as wars rage in the Middle East and Tehran grapples with mismanagement.
5 min read - TechnologyTechCrunch
Microsoft debuts Phi-4, a new generative AI model, in research preview
Microsoft has announced the newest addition to its Phi family of generative AI models. Called Phi-4, the model is improved in several areas over its predecessors, Microsoft claims — in particular math problem solving. Phi-4 is available in very limited access as of Thursday night: only on Microsoft's recently launched Azure AI Foundry development platform, and only for research purposes under a Microsoft research license agreement.
1 min read - TechnologyTechCrunch
Meta debuts a tool for watermarking AI-generated videos
The commoditization of generative AI has led to an absolute explosion of fake content online: According to ID verification platform Sumsub, there's been a 4x increase in deepfakes worldwide from 2023 to 2024. In what it hopes will be a meaningful contribution to the fight against deepfakes, Meta is releasing a tool to apply imperceptible watermarks to AI-generated video clips. Announced on Thursday, the tool, called Meta Video Seal, is available in open source and designed to be integrated int
2 min read
