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Reining in big tech This is less about regulation per se than liking some regulations and interventions more than others. Reading Carr’s public statements as FCC commissioner — he also authored the new administration’s ‘Project 2025’ section on the FCC — a variety of attention-grabbing opinions stand out. He’s a critic of what he claims are attacks on free speech by big tech platforms. As he put it on X (formerly Twitter) last week in…

Ed Bott/ZDNET ZDNET’s key takeaways The 13-inch Microsoft Surface Pro with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD is on sale now for $899 — $300 off the regular price. It features exceptional battery life, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processor lasting roughly twice as long as Intel CPUs. Heat doesn’t appear to be an issue, even when under demanding loads. Most mainstream business software written for Intel-based Windows PCs should run just fine, but apps…

Here’s a breakdown of specific details for the 10 fastest supercomputer systems on the TOP500 list for November 2024: No. 1: El Capitan Location: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif. HPL score: 1.742 Exaflop/s System model: HPE Cray EX255a Processors: AMD 4th generation EPYC processors with 24 cores at 1.8 GHz and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators Total core count: 11,039,616 Interconnect: Slingshot 11 Energy efficiency: 58.89 Gigaflops/watt No. 2: Frontier Location: Oak Ridge National Laboratory…

Svetlana Ivanova/Getty Images AI search engines combine the conversational capabilities of chatbots with the web, creating a new, optimized search experience. Despite their proficiency in research, AI search engines fall short in certain areas, such as online shopping. However, Perplexity hopes to change that with this new feature.  Also: The best AI chatbots of 2024: ChatGPT, Copilot, and worthy alternatives On Monday, Perplexity is rolling out what the company is calling a “first-of-its-kind AI commerce…

Svetlana Ivanova/Getty Images AI search engines combine the conversational capabilities of chatbots with the web, creating a new, optimized search experience. Despite their proficiency in research, AI search engines fall short in certain areas, such as online shopping. However, Perplexity hopes to change that with this new feature.  Also: The best AI chatbots of 2024: ChatGPT, Copilot, and worthy alternatives On Monday, Perplexity is rolling out what the company is calling a “first-of-its-kind AI commerce…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The TCL QM8 (2024) features rich colors and searing brightness. It has enhanced audio over last year’s model, while still being easy to set up and navigate. I wish the viewing angles weren’t somewhat limited, and you’ll want to wait for a deal to buy one. more buying choices As this year’s top-of-the-line offering, TCL’s latest flagship TV, the QM8, promised to be a notable upgrade from the 2023 version. I spent…

The DJI Power 1000 power station in action. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET What’s the deal? There’s currently a $340 coupon on Amazon for the DJI Power 1000 power station. ZDNET’s key takeaways The DJI Power 1000 power station is available on Amazon for $799 on Amazon.  It’s a powerful, premium quality power station that’s built to satisfy the needs of professional drone pilots. Unfortunately, there’s no storage compartment for the SDC accessory cables, nor is there a…

Up until now, the users were computational scientists exploring how these quantum circuits can be used for specific scientific domains, Mittal says. That’s starting to change. “At the 5,000-gate operations scale, we are also starting to see the emergence of quantum working in line with classical computing to calculate the properties of systems that are relevant to chemistry,” he says. Today, researchers, scientists, and quantum developers are beginning to leverage quantum computing to help solve…

Chalermphol Liawsutee/Getty Images Google’s NotebookLM is a popular AI-based note-taking service that can collect documents, URLs, audio files, and other content for any type of research. After you submit your source files, the AI is able to analyze, summarize, discuss, and answer questions about them. But one especially cool feature is the ability to take your source files and generate an audio overview in the form of a podcast. The audio features two AI-generated people…