et's cover the latest news and developments in the tech world!
From the new feature of the Threads app, the Runware AI advancements, the Microsoft Copilot and its new voice, and also the legal challenges that Apple faces from the U.S. Labor Board, stay tuned for these new updates that are shaping the industry!
Meta is continuously trying to improve how social platforms such as Threads app or X (formerly Twitter) integrate with fediverse. Until now, all of the users have been able to share their posts and publications with Mastodon servers and other platforms that are enabled by fediverse.
What is a fediverse? Fediverse represents an interconnected social platform ecosystem based on ActiviyPub, an open protocol. ActivityPub allows users to port their content, data, and followers list between other networks. For instance, if platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, X, or Facebook were to go offline, users would still be able to share content from anywhere, and all their followers would still see it.
But, more Threads news is coming as Adam Mosseri, the Instagram head, made an announcement this Tuesday that all of the users who connected their accounts to fediverse can see their Threads followers and also who liked their posts from other fediverse servers like Mastodon and Pixelfed.
“Starting today, people who have turned on sharing to the fediverse can see who follows them and likes their content from other fediverse servers,” , Adam Mosseri stated .
Information about the Threads viewer and the likes that are coming from the fediverse in the checking post activity feature and the complete list of Threads followers can be seen at the top of a user list of followers. It’s important to know that this information will only appear when the feature of fediverse sharing is enabled in their threads profiles.
All of these new improvements have the goal of helping the fediverse become a less abstract concept, and this Threads news is coming to consolidate even more the connection between the social platform and the fediverse. A few weeks ago, Threads started to let all of its users see the fediverse replies on other users' posts to help bring more content into the social platform. However, a downside of this feature is that users can’t respond to replies that are coming from other servers yet, and Meta stated that this feature is in progress.
On a different note, the Threads app has made a new feature public about the time window for editing posts, and it will now be available for 15 minutes. This new improvement will certainly impact fediverse sharing because the Threads posts will be published to fediverse after the editing window closes.
Currently, the sharding to fediverse feature is limited to Threads users who are 18 or older and have a public profile while living outside the EU. The activation of the fediverse sharing is raising some privacy concerns because those posts that are shared on other servers are not moderated by Meta. However, if a user disables this feature on Threads, it does not guarantee that all of the previously shared content will be removed from those servers.
Subscribe to our newsletter The Runware company is using custom hardware along with advanced orchestration to improve AI inference. Credits: Screenshot/Ruware
Indeed, occasionally, all you need to have a better understanding of a product is to have a demo. That can also be the case with Runware because if every user enters their website , makes a prompt, and hits the generate an image button, Runware will generate an image within seconds.
Runware represents a new and fresh beginner in the AI inference area and also in the generative AI or the startup point of view. The Runware company is trying to build its servers and optimize the software layer to eliminate almost all blockages while improving the AI inference speed for image generation.
It needs to be taken into consideration that the Runware company does not want to invent now a whole new area but just wants to make things a little bit faster because they are manufacturing their servers with as many as possible GPUs on the same mainboard while having a custom-made cooling system.
Runware managed to optimize the orchestration layer with BIOS and other optimizations for the operating system to improve the cold start times the demo is quite impressive and the company wants now to do a lot of research and put effort into development to turn it into a business.
Distinct from other GPU hosting providers , the Runware company doesn’t rent their GPU by the hour; instead, they encourage companies to have an accelerated workload. This is probably the reason why Runware offers an image generation API that has a straightforward cost-per-API pricing model that utilizes popular AI models from Flux and Stable Diffusion.
“If you look at Together AI, Replicate, Hugging Face — all of them — they are selling compute based on GPU time. If you compare the amount of time it takes for us to make an image versus them. And then you compare the pricing, you will see that we are so much cheaper, so much faster.” , the co-founder and CEO Flaviu Radulescu stated.
He added, “It’s going to be impossible for them to match this performance, especially in a cloud provider; you have to run on a virtualized environment, which adds additional delays.”
The Runware company hopes to use GPUs from multiple vendors shortly because they are now working to optimize the hardware and software while analyzing the AI inference engine pipeline. Because Nvidia represents the leader in the GPU area, this situation has been a struggle for a lot of startups.
In the case where AMD and other GPU sellers develop some compatibility layers for the standard AI workloads, the Runware company will have a good position to create a hybrid that could use the GPU from various vendors.
Microsoft is now enhancing its AI Copilot with a new and fresh voice and new thinking capabilities. Credits: Microsoft
Microsoft is now implementing its MS Copilot , a more friendly AI voice, in the last update. The Microsoft Copilot is capable of analyzing some web pages for interested users while they are browsing the internet.
According to Reuters, the Chief executive of Microsoft AI Copilot said that to have a unique and distinct AI voice for their Microsoft AI Copilot, the U.S. software maker has a lot of creative directors working along with psychologists, novelists, and comedians. They are now in the development process of making the Copilot AI voice better.
The new Copilot AI voice was launched yesterday, and it's the first that the Chief Executive, Mustafa Suleyman, has supervised since Microsoft Copilot created his division in March of this year to have a better focus on products and technology research. The Chief Executive is hoping to have a bigger impact with the Microsoft AI Copilot because it was recently launched in a field where chatbots are trending, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT and Gemini from Google.
Suleyman stated that the new voice from Copilot has a new and fresh approach and is developed to be a more active listener with verbal cues such as “huh” and “cool”.
Those users who are willing to spend $20 on a monthly subscription for the Copilot Pro can also test the “Think Deeper” feature, which can give them reasons for different choices and situations, such as choosing to move to one city or another.
Also, for those users who are paying a subscription, the Copilot Vision will be available to test the “digital pointing,” which represents the ability to talk to the AI Copilot about what they see in the Microsoft Edge browser. However, for this feature, Microsoft stated that all users and consumers must opt-in and ensure that the content they view will not be saved or used for training purposes.
The U.S. Labor Board is accusing Apple of Enforcing Illegal Workplace Policies. Credits: Unsplash
The National Labor Relation Board announced Monday that they issued a complaint accusing Apple of violating some employees' rights to organize and push for improved working conditions by enforcing several unlawful workplace policies. These news came soon after their Apple event , where they released updates regarding their products.
Looks like, in the Apple dispute charges, they were requiring or almost forcing their employees nationwide to sign an illegal confidentiality, non-disclosure, and also non-compete agreement. They also have set some overly broad policies about misconduct and social media.
According to a statement from an Apple spokesperson, he said that Apple business has always valued their employee's rights regarding wages, working hours, and conditions, and it also reflects in their policies about employment.
"We strongly disagree with these claims and will continue to share the facts at the hearing,", Apple stated.
In the situation where Apple's business fails to resolve the case, an administrative judge will hear them in January next year. Those decisions that are taken by administrative judges may be reviewed by a board of five members, and their rulings can be requested by the federal appeals courts.
This complaint comes after the Apple charges filed against Apple back in 2021 by Ashley Gjovik. She is a former senior engineering manager at Apple, and in her charges, she stated that several Apple business rules, such as confidentiality and social media use, discourage employees from discussing issues about pay equity with each other and the media. This also came after Apple was accused of underpaying female workers .
In addition, Ashley Gjovik filed a lawsuit against Apple in California federal court in May of this year, where she accused the company of illegally responding to her and attempting to organize other workers. The company has wholly denied these accusations, and this Tuesday, a judge dismissed most of the Gjovik lawsuit to give her a chance to modify her claims.
Right now, the company is also facing two Apple charges from the NLRB claiming that they fired an employee in their Cupertino headquarters in California because he criticized managers and interfered illegally in a union campaign at a retail store in Atlanta, but Apple denied every accusation.
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