Author: admin

AI startup Stability AI has released Stable Audio Open Small, a “stereo” audio-generating AI model that the company claims is the fastest on the market — and efficient enough to run on smartphones. Stable Audio Open Small is the fruit of a collaboration between Stability AI and Arm, the chipmaker that produces many of the processors inside tablets, phones, and other mobile devices. While a number of AI-powered apps can generate audio, like Suno and Udio, most rely on cloud processing, meaning that they can’t be used offline. Stability also claims that Stable Audio Open Small’s training set is made…

Kovr.ai, an AI-native cyber compliance automation platform, has exited stealth with $3.6m in seed funding.The round was co-led by IronGate and Xfund, with participation from Hack Factory, OODA Ventures, and McLean Capital.Founded by former AWS, Gartner, and PwC executives Andrew Black and Sri Iyer, Kovr.ai aims to simplify compliance for heavily regulated industries. Its platform helps organisations quickly meet complex standards like FedRAMP, CMMC, and NIST by automating traditionally manual processes.The capital will support team expansion in engineering, product development, and go-to-market efforts. Kovr.ai’s solution integrates with DevOps tools such as GitHub, Splunk, and Snyk, and includes features like real-time…

As Canadian credit unions prepare for the end of Central 1’s digital banking platforms, Plumery and Aequilibrium have joined forces to support the sector through this critical period of transition.Plumery, known for its digital banking experience platform focused on customer-centricity, and Aequilibrium, a Vancouver-based digital transformation specialist, are working together to offer a secure and scalable alternative for small to mid-sized credit unions impacted by the wind-down of Central 1’s Forge and MemberDirect solutions.The move comes as the National Digital Banking Working Group (NDBWG) continues its search for solutions that reflect the unique needs and cooperative values of Canada’s credit…

A Dawn.com journalist has become the first Pakistani to win the top prize in the ‘Young Reporters Writing’ category at the International Sport Press Association’s 2024 AIPS Sport Media Awards, which honour the “world’s finest sports journalists”. According to a press release issued on Tuesday, the award ceremony was held in Rabat, the capital of Morocco. Anushe Engineer was chosen as the winner from three finalists in her category, surpassing France’s Louis Boulay and the United Kingdom’s Issy Ronald, for her feature, ‘It’s all or nothing for Arshad Nadeem in Paris’. The finalists were shortlisted from 37 entries initially selected…

A Dawn.com journalist has become the first Pakistani to win the top prize in the ‘Young Reporters Writing’ category at the International Sport Press Association’s 2024 AIPS Sport Media Awards, which honour the “world’s finest sports journalists”. According to a press release issued on Tuesday, the award ceremony was held in Rabat, the capital of Morocco. Anushe Engineer was chosen as the winner from three finalists in her category, surpassing France’s Louis Boulay and the United Kingdom’s Issy Ronald, for her feature, ‘It’s all or nothing for Arshad Nadeem in Paris’. The finalists were shortlisted from 37 entries initially selected…

myPOS and YouLend have announced a new partnership aimed at improving access to capital for small businesses in France.The collaboration marks a significant step in expanding embedded finance solutions across Europe, beginning with a new service tailored to French merchants.The integration allows eligible myPOS customers to obtain revenue-based financing directly from the FinTech’s all-in-one platform. Repayment is designed to be seamless and flexible, as merchants repay by dedicating a portion of their card payment revenues processed through myPOS, easing pressure on cash flow during slower business periods.Only active myPOS merchants who have been using the platform for at least 12…

Google’s AI R&D lab DeepMind says it has developed a new AI system to tackle problems with “machine-gradable” solutions. In experiments, the system, called AlphaEvolve, could help optimize some of the infrastructure Google uses to train its AI models, DeepMind said. The company says it’s building a user interface for interacting with AlphaEvolve, and plans to launch an early access program for selected academics ahead of a possible broader rollout. Most AI models hallucinate. Owing to their probabilistic architectures, they confidently make things up sometimes. In fact, newer AI models like OpenAI’s o3 hallucinate more than their predecessors, illustrating the…

Chip giants Intel, AMD and Arm each published Patch Tuesday security advisories to inform customers about vulnerabilities found recently in their products, including ones related to newly disclosed CPU attacks. One of the CPU attacks was disclosed this week by researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich. The researchers discovered a branch privilege injection issue, tracked as CVE-2024-45332, that they claim “brings back the full might of branch target injection attacks (Spectre-BTI) on Intel”. The researchers claim that while Intel’s Spectre-BTI (aka Spectre v2) mitigations have worked for nearly six years, they have now found a way to break them due…

More than 1,000 Starbucks baristas at 75 U.S. stores have gone on strike since Sunday to protest a new company dress code, a union representing the coffee giant’s workers said Wednesday.Starbucks put new limits starting Monday on what its baristas can wear under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees at company-operated and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada to wear a solid black shirt and khaki, black or blue denim bottoms. Under the previous dress code, baristas could wear a broader range of dark colors and patterned shirts. Starbucks said the new rules would make its green…

Gemini, Google’s AI-powered chatbot, can now connect to GitHub — for users subscribed to the $20-per-month Gemini Advanced plan, that is. As of Wednesday, Gemini Advanced customers can directly add a public or private codebase on GitHub to Gemini to allow the chatbot to generate and explain code, debug existing code, and more. Users can connect GitHub to Gemini by clicking the “+” button in the prompt bar, selecting “import code,” and pasting a GitHub URL. Gemini Advanced now connects with @github, making it a more powerful coding assistant.Directly connect to public or private GitHub repos to generate/modify functions, explain…