BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: The Wine team has officially released Wine 10.0, marking a full year of extensive development with over 6,000 changes. This stable release introduces major updates designed to enhance performance, compatibility, and visual experience when running Windows applications on Linux and other non-Windows platforms. Here's a list of the new changes and features: - Full ARM64EC Support: Now on par with ARM64, allowing the creation of hybrid ARM64X modules blending ARM64EC and ARM64 code in a single binary. - 64-bit x86 Emulation: Leverages ARM64EC to run internal processes natively, reducing the need for resource-intensive emulation. - High-DPI Scaling Overhaul: Automatic adjustments for non-DPI-aware applications on high-resolution displays with customizable compatibility flags. - Vulkan Improvements: Support for Vulkan child window rendering under X11 and compatibility with Vulkan 1.4.303. - Direct3D Updates: Fixed-function pipeline for legacy Direct3D versions and introduced Dynamic Vulkan extensions to reduce stuttering. - Experimental FFmpeg Backend: Better multimedia playback for applications with complex media pipelines. - New Display Configuration Tool: Allows inspection and modification of settings, including virtual desktop resolutions. - Wayland Graphics Driver: Enabled by default on Linux, with support for OpenGL and improved popup window placement (X11 takes precedence unless disabled). - Input Device Improvements: Enhanced touchscreen support for X11 and expanded Bluetooth functionality. - Internationalization Enhancements: Updated Unicode character tables and timezone data for better global compatibility. - Upgraded Libraries: Includes FluidSynth, LibPng, and Vkd3d, alongside new developer tools like the Clang Static Analyzer and improved ARM64 support for C++ exceptions. You can download Wine 10.0 and learn more about the release here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: This year, artificial intelligence will be dominated by the maturation of AI code as corporate "workers" that can take over corporate processes and be managed just like employees, according to a year-outlook blog post disseminated by investment bank Goldman Sachs featuring its chief information officer, Marco Argenti. "The capabilities of AI models to plan and execute complex, long-running tasks on humans' behalf will begin to mature," writes Argenti. "This will create the conditions for companies to eventually 'employ' and train AI workers to be part of hybrid teams of humans and AIs working together." "There's a great opportunity for capital to move towards the application layer, the toolset layer," says Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti. "I think we will see that shift happening, most likely as early as next year." Argenti predicts that corporate HR offices will have to manage "human and machine resources," and there may even be AI "layoffs" as programs are replaced by more highly capable versions. [...] Among other predictions offered by Argenti is that the most-capable AI models will be like PhD graduates -- so-called expert AI systems that have "industry-specific knowledge" for finance, medicine, etc. [...] "The intersection of LLMs and robotics will increasingly bring AI into, and enable it to experience, the physical world, which will help enable reasoning capabilities for AI," he writes. Argenti sees "responsible AI" increasing in importance as a board-room priority in 2025, and, in something of a repeat of last year's predictions, he expects that the largest generative AI models -- the "frontier" models of OpenAI and others -- will become the province of only a handful of institutions with budgets large enough to pursue their enormous training costs. That is the "Formula One" version of AI, where the "engines" of AI are made by a handful of powerful providers. Everyone else will work on smaller-model development, Argenti predicts. Further reading: Nvidia's Huang Says That IT Will 'Become the HR of AI Agents'

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According to CBS News, President Trump plans to announce billions of dollars in private sector investment to build AI infrastructure in the United States. From the report: OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is expected at the White House Tuesday afternoon, along with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. Executives from the companies are expected to say they plan to commit $100 billion initially and pour up to $500 billion into Stargate over the next four years. Other details of the new partnership were not immediately available. Stargate will start with a data center project in Texas, sources said, and eventually expand to other states. Other investors are expected to join the venture, but it was not immediately clear which ones. Further reading: Scale AI CEO To Trump: 'America Must Win the AI War'

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EA's Origin PC client will be shut down on April 17, 2025, as Microsoft ends support for 32-bit software. "Anyone still using Origin will need to swap over to the EA app before that date," adds Engadget. From the report: For those PC players who have not migrated over to the EA app, the company has an FAQ explaining the latest system requirements. The EA app runs on 64-bit architecture, and requires a machine using Windows 10 or Windows 11. [...] If you're simply downloading the EA app on a current machine, players won't need to re-download their games. And if you have cloud saves enabled, all of your data should transfer without any additional steps. However, it's always a good idea to have physical backups with this type of transition, especially since not all games support cloud saves, and those titles will need to have saved game data manually transferred. Mods also may not automatically make the switch, and EA recommends players check with mod creators about transferring to the EA app.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released its new R1 model family under an open MIT license, with its largest version containing 671 billion parameters. The company claims the model performs at levels comparable to OpenAI's o1 simulated reasoning (SR) model on several math and coding benchmarks. Alongside the release of the main DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1 models, DeepSeek published six smaller "DeepSeek-R1-Distill" versions ranging from 1.5 billion to 70 billion parameters. These distilled models are based on existing open source architectures like Qwen and Llama, trained using data generated from the full R1 model. The smallest version can run on a laptop, while the full model requires far more substantial computing resources. The releases immediately caught the attention of the AI community because most existing open-weights models -- which can often be run and fine-tuned on local hardware -- have lagged behind proprietary models like OpenAI's o1 in so-called reasoning benchmarks. Having these capabilities available in an MIT-licensed model that anyone can study, modify, or use commercially potentially marks a shift in what's possible with publicly available AI models. "They are SO much fun to run, watching them think is hilarious," independent AI researcher Simon Willison told Ars in a text message. Willison tested one of the smaller models and described his experience in a post on his blog: "Each response starts with a ... pseudo-XML tag containing the chain of thought used to help generate the response," noting that even for simple prompts, the model produces extensive internal reasoning before output. Although the benchmarks have yet to be independently verified, DeepSeek reports that R1 outperformed OpenAI's o1 on AIME (a mathematical reasoning test), MATH-500 (a collection of word problems), and SWE-bench Verified (a programming assessment tool). TechCrunch notes that three Chinese labs -- DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI's Kimi, have released models that match o1's capabilities.

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More than half of video game developers reported their companies are using generative AI in game development, according to an annual survey released Tuesday. The Game Developers Conference (GDC) report found that 52% of developers worked at companies using AI tools, while 30% felt negatively about the technology, up from 18% last year. Only 13% believed AI had a positive impact on games, down from 21% in 2024. One in 10 developers lost their jobs over the past year, with some reporting extended periods of unemployment. One developer cited in a Wired story said they submitted 500 job applications without success, while another reported being laid off three times in the last year. Covid-era over-expansion, unrealistic expectations, and poor management are being identified as key factors behind the industry's troubles.

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Britain will launch a digital wallet app later this year allowing citizens to store government documents on their smartphones, UK Science Secretary Peter Kyle announced on Tuesday. The GOV.UK Wallet, available on Android and iOS, will first support veteran cards followed by driver's licenses in late 2025, with plans to eventually include passports, marriage certificates and benefit documents. The app will use facial recognition for security. "The overflowing drawer rammed with letters from the government and hours spent on hold to get a basic appointment will soon be consigned to history," Kyle said. The Labour government aims to have all UK agencies offering digital alternatives to physical documents by 2027. Officials said users can recover their digital credentials if phones are lost, adding the system complies with existing data protection laws.

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The United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization, according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, who cited WHO's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and demands for "unfairly onerous payments" from Washington. The order -- which takes a year to go into effect -- halts U.S. funding to WHO and recalls American personnel working with the organization. It also revokes a January 2021 letter that had kept the U.S. in WHO after an earlier withdrawal attempt. The White House ordered officials to find new partners to take over WHO-led activities and directed a review of the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy.

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Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang is taking out a full-page ad in The Washington Post on Tuesday with a succinct message for the new US commander-in-chief: "Dear President Trump, America must win the AI war." From a report: The ad also pointed readers to a five-point plan that would reorient the federal government to invest more in the technology and overhaul priorities for that funding. In an exclusive interview with Semafor, Wang said he was motivated to make his recommendations by a new White House that is both planning to aggressively support new technology and courting input from the industry. "They're listening," he said. "This incoming administration wants to move fast and take a lot of action and really be quite ambitious about a lot of these issues." [...] "What's undeniable, if you think about what the future is going to look like, is the degree to which the amount of computational capability you have will be directly related to how strong your AI capabilities are," Wang said before he arrived at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Wang also recommends the US government should make a larger effort to cut the red tape on new energy production, inviting pent-up demand for private sector investment in the area.

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EFishery, one of Indonesia's most prominent startups, may have inflated its revenue and profit over several years, according to an internal investigation triggered by a whistleblower's claim about the company's accounting. Bloomberg News: A preliminary, ongoing probe into the agritech startup, backed by investors including SoftBank and Temasek, estimates that management inflated revenue by almost $600 million in the nine months through September last year, according to a 52-page draft report circulated among investors and reviewed by Bloomberg News. That would mean more than 75% of the reported figures were fake, the report said. EFishery, which deploys feeders to fish and shrimp farmers in Indonesia, was a darling of the nation's startup scene and scored a valuation of $1.4 billion when G42, an AI firm controlled by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, backed its latest funding round. It has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to modernize the country's fish industry, providing farmers with smart feeding devices as well as feed, and then buying their produce to sell into the broader market.

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Migrating from VMware's virtualization platform could take up to four years and cost organizations between $300 and $3,000 per virtual machine, Gartner has warned in a new report. Companies running 2,000 or more virtual machines will need up to 10 full-time staff for initial assessment and another six employees for a nine-month technical evaluation, according to Gartner.

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More than 40% of individual corals monitored around a Great Barrier Reef island were killed last year in the most widespread coral bleaching outbreak to hit the reef system, a study has found. The Guardian: Scientists tracked 462 colonies of corals at One Tree Island in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef after heat stress began to turn the corals white in early 2024. Researchers said they encountered "catastrophic" scenes at the reef. Only 92 coral colonies escaped bleaching entirely and by July, when the analysis for the study ended, 193 were dead and a further 113 were still showing signs of bleaching. Prof Maria Byrne, a marine biologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the study, has been researching and visiting the island for 35 years.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency's agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority. In a statement, Carr named a few areas of focus: "issues ranging from tech and media regulation to unleashing new opportunities for jobs and growth through agency actions on spectrum, infrastructure, and the space economy." Carr's priorities might also be gleaned from a document you might have already heard about: Project 2025. That's because he authored the FCC chapter of the Heritage Foundation's wishlist for a Donald Trump presidency. In that chapter, Carr proposes actions including: limiting immunity for tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, requiring disclosures about how platforms prioritize content, requiring tech companies to pay into a program that funds broadband access in rural areas, and more, quickly approving applications to launch satellites from companies like Elon Musk's Starlink.

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China broke its own record in installing renewable power in 2024, as the world's top polluter continues to push its energy transition while the US shifts away from fighting climate change. From a report: The world's second-largest economy added roughly 277 gigawatts of solar last year, surpassing the previous year's record of 217 gigawatts, the National Energy Administration said in a statement on Tuesday. It also added nearly 80 gigawatts of wind, according to the statement. The record installation means China has hit its 2030 renewables target six years early. This stands in contrast to the US, the world's second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, where new President Donald Trump has started implementing a hard pivot back to fossil fuels and withdrawn from the Paris climate pact.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security. Biden's order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they were released to the public. Four days before leaving office, Biden issued a comprehensive cybersecurity executive order that also targeted AI usage. The directive aimed to leverage AI's security benefits, implement digital identities for citizens, and address vulnerabilities that have allowed Chinese and Russian intrusions into U.S. government systems, among other things. It's unclear at this time if it, too, will be revoked.

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Ars Technica's John Timmer reports: In Monday's issue of Nature Geoscience, a team of UK-based researchers tackle a big one: Mars' dichotomy, the somewhat nebulous boundary between its relatively elevated southern half, and the low basin that occupies its northern hemisphere, a feature that some have proposed also served as an ancient shoreline. The new work suggests that the edge of the dichotomy was eroded back by hundreds of kilometers during the time when an ocean might have occupied Mars' northern hemisphere. [...] The new work focuses on an area called Mawrth Vallis, which sits at the edge of the dichotomy. Relative to the northern basin, it's a kilometer-high plateau cut by a major outflow channel that seems to have been caused by one or more massive floods. The slopes surrounding the plateau feature different types of clay-derived minerals, suggesting the area had been subject to interactions between the original materials and water. Rather than focusing on the plateau itself, the work focuses on the neighboring lowlands, which include a large region dotted with thousands of buttes and mesas that rise roughly a kilometer above the surrounding plains. Using data from the ESA's Mars Express mission, they determine that these features tend to top out at the same height as the nearby plateau. And, using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they determined that the clays present along the slopes match those found on the plateau as well. Their conclusion from this is that the mesas and buttes are the remains of what was once a far larger plateau, which was largely eroded away on the side facing the northern basin. And that erosion took place across a pretty significant distance, as the buttes extend hundreds of kilometers away from the present highlands. And, just as at the highland plateau, these mounds hint at a water-based process that modified the rocks from the top down. That's because the deeper clays are often magnesium-rich, which tends to happen when water comes in contact with volcanic rocks or material with similar chemistry. Closer to the surface, things transition to aluminum- and iron-rich clays. These clays can occur when the water source is acidic or can be simply due to longer exposure to water, as the magnesium clays are a bit more soluble. The huge area covered by these mounds gives a sense of just how significant this erosion was. "The dichotomy boundary has receded several hundred kilometers," the researchers note. "Nearly all intervening material -- approximately 57,000 cubic kilometers over an area of 284,000 square kilometers west of Ares Vallis alone -- has been removed, leaving only remnant mounds." Based on the distribution of the different clays, the team argues that their water-driven formation took place before the erosion of the material. This would indicate that water-rock interactions were going on over a very wide region early in the history of Mars, which likely required an extensive hydrological cycle on the red planet. As the researchers note, a nearby ocean would have improved the chances of exposing this region to water, but the exposure could also have been due to processes like melting at the base of an ice cap. Complicating matters further, many of the mounds top out below one proposed shoreline of the northern ocean and above a second. It's possible that a receding ocean could have contributed to their erosion. But, at the same time, some of the features of a proposed shoreline now appear to have been caused by the general erosion of the original plateau, and may not be associated with an ocean at all.

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order today delaying the TikTok ban for 75 days. The Verge reports: The order, issued on Trump's first day of office, is meant to effectively extend the deadline established by The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act for ByteDance to sell its stake by undercutting penalties on American companies like Apple and Google working with TikTok. It directs the Attorney General "not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way." The AG is supposed to "issue a letter to each provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred." The order furthermore instructs the Department of Justice to "take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act" and says they should be barred from doing so "for any conduct that occurred during the above-specified period or any period prior to the issuance of this order, including the period of time from January 19, 2025, to the signing of this order." It remains unclear whether Trump can legally pause the ban. It's also unclear how he plans to enforce a 50 percent "joint venture" ownership with the company, a move he announced on Sunday.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The surge of interest in AI is creating a massive demand for computing power. Around the world, companies are trying to keep up with the vast amount of GPUs needed to power more and more advanced AI models. While GPUs are not the only option for running an AI model, they have become the hardware of choice due to their ability to efficiently handle multiple operations simultaneously -- a critical feature when developing deep learning models. But not every AI startup has the capital to invest in the huge numbers of GPUs now required to run a cutting-edge model. For some, it's a better deal to outsource it. This has led to the rise of a new business: GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS). In recent years, companies like Hyperbolic, Kinesis, Runpod, and Vast.ai have sprouted up to remotely offer their clients the needed processing power. [...] Studies have shown that more than half of the existing GPUs are not in use at any given time. Whether we're talking personal computers or colossal server farms, a lot of processing capacity is under-utilized. What Kinesis does is identify idle compute -- both for GPUs and CPUs -- in servers worldwide and compile them into a single computing source for companies to use. Kinesis partners with universities, data centers, companies, and individuals who are willing to sell their unused computing power. Through a special software installed on their servers, Kinesis detects idle processing units, preps them, and offers them to their clients for temporary use. [...] The biggest advantage of GPUaaS is economical. By removing the need to purchase and maintain the physical infrastructure, it allows companies to avoid investing in servers and IT management, and to instead put their resources toward improving their own deep learning, large language, and large vision models. It also lets customers pay for the exact amount of GPUs they use, saving the costs of the inevitable idle compute that would come with their own servers. The report notes that GPUaaS is growing in profitability. "In 2023, the industry's market size was valued at US $3.23 billion; in 2024, it grew to $4.31 billion," reports IEEE. "It's expected to rise to $49.84 billion by 2032."

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Many of the world's largest tech companies, including Meta, Google, TikTok, and X, have pledged to European lawmakers that they will do more to prevent and remove illegal hate speech on their platforms. The revised set of voluntary commitments unveiled on Monday aim to help platforms "demonstrate their compliance" with the Digital Services Act (DSA) obligations regarding illegal content moderation. The Verge reports: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, Rakuten Viber, and Microsoft-hosted consumer services have all signed the "Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online Plus" -- which is not a terribly named streaming service but an update to a 2016 Code. The revised code commits signatories to transparency around hate speech detection and reduction, to allowing third-party monitors to assess how hate speech notices are reviewed by the platforms, and to review "at least two-thirds of hate speech notices" within 24 hours. These EU Codes of Conduct are voluntary commitments and companies face no penalties if they decide to back out of the agreement [...].

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The notorious hacker IntelBroker claims to have stolen data from HPE systems, including source code, private repositories, digital certificates, and access to certain services. SecurityWeek reports: The compromised data allegedly includes source code for products such as Zerto and iLO, private GitHub repositories, digital certificates, Docker builds, and even some personal information that the hacker described as "old user PII for deliveries." IntelBroker is also offering access to some services used by HPE, including APIs, WePay, GitHub and GitLab. Contacted by SecurityWeek, HPE said it's aware of the breach claims and is conducting an investigation. "HPE became aware on January 16 of claims being made by a group called IntelBroker that it was in possession of information belonging to HPE. HPE immediately activated our cyber response protocols, disabled related credentials, and launched an investigation to evaluate the validity of the claims," said HPE spokesperson Adam R. Bauer. "There is no operational impact to our business at this time, nor evidence that customer information is involved," Bauer added.

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