Apple will officially discontinue support for its original Home architecture (formerly HomeKit) on February 10, 2026. As MacRumors points out, Apple has informed users that they need to "update now to avoid interruptions." AppleInsider reports: The underlying HomeKit architecture was revamped in March 2023 alongside iOS 16.4, so Apple has been supporting both the new and old architecture for the last two years. There were initial problems with stability that may have discouraged some users from upgrading, but those problems have now been addressed. When Apple stops supporting the original HomeKit architecture, it will break support for the Home app on devices running older versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, macOS 13.1, tvOS 16.2, and watchOS 9.2 are the minimum versions of Apple's platforms that work with the updated Apple Home app, and older devices will lose access. The update includes support for features like guest access, support for robot vacuum cleaners, and Activity History. Apple says it also provides faster, more reliable performance, especially for smart homes with a lot of HomeKit and Matter accessories installed.

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Google's new "Project Suncatcher" aims to launch Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) into space, creating a solar-powered, satellite-based AI network capable of scaling machine learning beyond Earth's limits. Google says a "solar panel can be up to 8 times more productive than on earth" for near-continuous power using a "dawn-dusk sun-synchronous low earth orbit" that reduces the need for batteries and other power generation. 9to5Google reports: These satellites would connect via free-space optical links, with large-scale ML workloads "distributing tasks across numerous accelerators with high-bandwidth, low-latency connections." To match data centers on Earth, the connection between satellites would have to be tens of terabits per second, and they'd have to fly in "very close formation (kilometers or less)." Google has already conducted radiation testing on TPUs (Trillium, v6e), with "promising" results: "While the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) subsystems were the most sensitive component, they only began showing irregularities after a cumulative dose of 2 krad(Si) -- nearly three times the expected (shielded) five year mission dose of 750 rad(Si). No hard failures were attributable to TID up to the maximum tested dose of 15 krad(Si) on a single chip, indicating that Trillium TPUs are surprisingly radiation-hard for space applications." Finally, Google believes that launch costs will "fall to less than $200/kg by the mid-2030s." At that point, the "cost of launching and operating a space-based data center could become roughly comparable to the reported energy costs of an equivalent terrestrial data center on a per-kilowatt/year basis."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, Samsung provided details about the next version of the HDR10 format, which introduces six new features. Among HDR10+ Advanced's most interesting features is HDR10+ Intelligent FRC (frame rate conversion), which is supposed to improve motion smoothing. A TV using motion smoothing analyzes each video frame and tries to determine what additional frames would look like if the video were playing at a frame rate that matched the TV's refresh rate. The TV then inserts those frames into the video. A 60Hz TV with motion smoothing on, for example, would attempt to remove judder from a 24p film by inserting frames so that the video plays as if it were shot at 60p. For some, this appears normal and can make motion, especially camera panning or zooming, look smoother. However, others will report movies and shows that look more like soap operas, or as if they were shot on higher-speed video cameras instead of film cameras. Critics, including some big names in Hollywood, argue that motion smoothing looks unnatural and deviates from the creator's intended vision. Intelligent FRC takes a more nuanced approach to motion smoothing by letting content creators dictate the level of motion smoothing used in each scene, Forbes reported. The feature is also designed to adjust the strength of motion interpolation based on ambient lighting.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft officially ended mainstream support for Windows 10 last month, nudging users to upgrade to Windows 11. While that led to almost an overnight technological revolution in Japan, elsewhere, it has caused a lot of confusion. Certain versions of Windows 10, like Enterprise LTSC -- and those enrolled in the ESU program -- are still scheduled to receive security updates through at least 2027, but they're starting to see out-of-support messages in Settings. Various users over the past few days reported that they're being subjected to end-of-life warnings in Windows, despite already qualifying for extended security updates through the ESU program. Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 and âIoT Enterprise are business-oriented editions of the OS, so they're already supported up to 2032, but even they saw these incorrect messages. This widespread bug started to occur after the KB5066791 updates were pushed on October 14, 2025. Microsoft has already acknowledged this mishap and said, "The message, 'Your version of Windows has reached the end of support, might incorrectly display in the Windows Update Settings page," confirming it as a mistake. The company has already released a cloud config fix that should remove the message, but you need to be connected to the internet for that, and a restart is also required.

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Ferrari is tapping into crypto markets and tech-rich youngsters with a planned new digital token that its wealthiest fans will be able to use in an auction for a Ferrari 499P, the endurance car that won three straight Le Mans titles. From a report: The plan for now is limited in scope and is an effort by the Italian sports car maker to tap into a trend among luxury brands seeking access to the growing wealth of younger tech entrepreneurs, as AI and data centres drive investment and markets around the world. It comes after Ferrari, which is also developing its first electric car, began accepting Bitcoin, ethereum and USDC for car purchases in the United States in 2023 and extended the service to Europe last year. Ferrari is working with Italian fintech Conio to launch the 'Token Ferrari 499P' for members of its Hyperclub -- which groups 100 of its most exclusive clients, with a passion for endurance races -- to trade amongst themselves and bid on the racing model.

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IBM will cut thousands of roles this quarter while it continues to shift focus to higher-growth software and services, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. From a report: "We routinely review our workforce through this lens and at times rebalance accordingly," Bloomberg quoted a company spokesperson saying. "In the fourth quarter we are executing an action that will impact a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce."

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Nearly one year ago Microsoft announced the HBv5 virtual machines powered by a custom-designed AMD 4th Gen EPYC processor with high bandwidth memory (HBM3). Finally today the Azure HBv5 series is reaching general availability for those with memory-intensive HPC applications and other workloads. Microsoft kindly provided Phoronix with HBv5 access in advance to begin testing these new VMs with the AMD EPYC 9V64H CPUs featuring HBM memory, so here are some of the first independent benchmarks of these exciting processors powering Azure's new HPC VM instances.

Three employees at cybersecurity companies spent years moonlighting as criminal hackers, launching their own ransomware attacks in a plot to extort millions of dollars from victims around the country, US prosecutors alleged in court filings. From a report: Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former incident response supervisor at Sygnia Consulting, and Kevin Tyler Martin, who was a ransomware negotiator for DigitalMint, were charged with working together to hack five businesses starting in May 2023. In one instance, they, along with a third person, received a ransom payment of nearly $1.3 million worth of cryptocurrency from a medical device company based in Tampa, Florida, according to prosecutors. The trio worked in a part of the cybersecurity industry that has sprung up to help companies negotiate with hackers to unfreeze their computer networks -- sometimes by paying ransom. They are also accused of sharing their illicit profits with the developers of the type of ransomware they allegedly used on their victims. DigitalMint informed some customers about the charges last week, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News. The other person who was allegedly involved in the scheme was also a ransomware negotiator at the same firm as Martin but wasn't charged, according to court records. The person wasn't identified in court records, nor were the companies that were the defendants' former employers. Sygnia confirmed Goldberg had worked there. Martin last year gave a talk at a law school, which listed him as an employee of DigitalMint.

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The Rust Foundation announced today the creation of the Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund as a new means of providing consistent, transparent, and long-term support for developers that make the Rust programming language possible...

Les pilotes GeForce Game Ready 581.80 viennent d'être livrés sur la toile. Ils apportent les optimisations prévues pour les jeux Anno 117: Pax Romana, Europa Universalis V et Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Pour ce dernier titre, le DLSS 4, la Multi Frame Generation et Reflex sont incorporés pour le jour...

Amazon has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity AI demanding that the AI search startup stop allowing its AI browser agent, Comet, to make purchases online for users. From a report: The e-commerce giant is accusing Perplexity of committing computer fraud by failing to disclose when its AI agent is shopping on a user's behalf, in violation of Amazon's terms of service, according to people familiar with the letter sent on Friday. The document also said Perplexity's tool degraded the Amazon shopping experience and introduced privacy vulnerabilities, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. In response, Perplexity said Amazon is bullying a smaller competitor with a rival AI agent shopping product. The clash between Amazon and Perplexity offers an early glimpse into a looming debate over how to handle the proliferation of so-called AI agents that field more complex tasks online for users, including shopping. Like OpenAI and Alphabet's Google, Perplexity has pushed to rethink the traditional web browser around AI, with the goal of having it streamline more actions for users, such as drafting emails and conducting research.

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Apple is preparing to enter the low-cost laptop market for the first time, developing a budget Mac aimed at luring away customers from Chromebooks and entry-level Windows PCs. Bloomberg News: The new device -- designed for students, businesses and casual users -- will target people who primarily browse the web, work on documents or conduct light media editing, according to people familiar with the matter. [...] Apple plans to sell the new machine for well under $1,000 by using less-advanced components. The laptop will rely on an iPhone processor and a lower-end LCD display. The screen will also be the smallest of any current Mac, coming in at slightly below the 13.6-inch one used in the MacBook Air. This would mark the first time that Apple has used an iPhone processor in a Mac, rather than a chip designed specifically for a computer. But internal tests have shown that the smartphone chip can perform better than the Mac-optimized M1 used in laptops as recently as a few years ago.

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Speaking of Australia, its government has introduced content quotas on global streamers. From a report: The rules require Netflix, Prime Video and the other global streamers with more than one million Australian subscribers to spend 10% of their total Australian expenditure -- or 7.5% of their revenues -- on local originals, whether they are dramas, children's shows, docs, or arts and educational programs. Following the announcement, the legislation will be introduced into the Australian parliament. Australia's Labor government has long planned to being in the quotas as part of its Revive cultural policy, but months and months of delays had left the local industry wondering how committed their political leaders were to the plan. Global streamers have broadly rejected the necessity of quotas, claiming their local investment in content and jobs offsets them.

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Britain's National Centre for Gaming Disorders has treated 67 people over the age of 40 since opening in 2019. The oldest patient was a 72-year-old woman with a smartphone gaming obsession. Britons over 65 spent more than three hours a day online on smartphones, computers and tablets last year, according to Ofcom. They spent more than five and a half hours watching broadcast television. Over-65s are more likely than under-25s to own tablets, smart televisions, e-readers, and desktop and laptop computers, a seven-country survey by GWI found. Nearly a fifth of 55- to 64-year-olds own a games console. Ipsit Vahia, who heads the Technology and Ageing Laboratory at McLean Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School, said some older adults are increasingly living their lives through their phones the way teenagers or adolescents sometimes do. A 2022 study in South Korea estimated that 15% of those aged 60-69 were at risk of phone addiction. A meta-analysis published in April of studies on more than 400,000 older adults found that over-50s who regularly used digital devices had lower rates of cognitive decline than those who did not.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Before the potential of the internet was appreciated around the world, nations that understood its importance managed to scoop outsized allocations of IPv4 addresses, actions that today mean many users in the rest of the world are more likely to find their connections throttled or blocked. So says Cloudflare, which last week published research that recalls how once the world started to run out of IPv4 addresses, engineers devised network address translation (NAT) so that multiple devices can share a single IPv4 address. NAT can handle tens of thousands of devices, but carriers typically operate many more. Internetworking wonks therefore developed Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT), which can handle over 100 devices per IPv4 address and scale to serve millions of users. That's useful for carriers everywhere, but especially valuable for carriers in those countries that missed out on big allocations of IPv4 because their small pool of available number resources means they must employ CGNAT to handle more users and devices. Cloudflare's research suggests carriers in Africa and Asia use CGNAT more than those on other continents. Cloudflare worried that could be bad for individual netizens. "CGNATs also create significant operational fallout stemming from the fact that hundreds or even thousands of clients can appear to originate from a single IP address," wrote Cloudflare researchers Vasilis Giotsas and Marwan Fayed. "This means an IP-based security system may inadvertently block or throttle large groups of users as a result of a single user behind the CGNAT engaging in malicious activity. Blocking the shared IP therefore penalizes many innocent users along with the abuser."

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Appetizer

Libéré de son exclusivité avec Microsoft, OpenAI n’a pas perdu de temps : l’éditeur de ChatGPT a annoncé mardi la conclusion d’un contrat d’envergure avec Amazon. Sa filiale dédiée au cloud, AWS, devrait ainsi mettre des ressources à disposition, à hauteur d’au moins 38 milliards de dollars sur sept ans. OpenAI s’assure ainsi une présence significative sur les infrastructures de deux des trois plus grands fournisseurs de cloud de la planète, et s’invite au passage sur les plate-bandes de son concurrent Anthropic.

La collaboration, qui débute immédiatement, prévoit déjà 38 milliards de dollars de dépenses sur sept ans, mais ce montant peut être amené à croître, affirment d’emblée les deux nouveaux partenaires. Amazon Web Services (AWS) et OpenAI ont en effet formalisé un accord stratégique de grande ampleur le 3 novembre, selon les termes duquel le premier mettra à la disposition du second ses infrastructures informatiques dans toutes les régions du monde.

Un nouveau client de taille et une infra à construire pour AWS

À très court terme, l’accord prévoit qu’OpenAI déploie ses modèles sur les infrastructures actuelles d’AWS, pour l’entraînement ou pour la fourniture du service ChatGPT aux clients finaux. Mais il est aussi question qu’Amazon construise des capacités fléchées vers OpenAI, avec un premier jalon (non chiffré) fixé à fin 2026, puis un programme d’expansion à partir de 2027.

« L’infrastructure qu’AWS est en train de construire pour OpenAI présente une architecture sophistiquée optimisée pour une efficacité et des performances maximales en matière de traitement de l’IA », promet Amazon, selon qui l’entreprise de Sam Altman va ainsi accéder à des « centaines de milliers de GPU NVIDIA », avec la possibilité d’associer ces derniers à des « dizaines de millions de CPU » pour sous-tendre le développement de ses produits commerciaux.

Si les deux partenaires communiquent sur l’enveloppe financière globale du contrat, aucun détail chiffré n’est donné, ni sous forme de nombre de machines, ni même sous forme de puissance électrique associée, quant à la capacité réelle des infrastructures prévues. AWS évoque simplement le recours à deux générations de puces NVIDIA (les GB200 et GB300 de classe Blackwell), et vante les mérites de l’interconnexion directe entre ces GPU et ses serveurs EC2.

En dépit de ce flou relatif, les 38 milliards de dollars annoncés ont fait gagner quelques points à l’action Amazon en bourse, alors que cette dernière caracolait déjà à des plus hauts historiques suite à la publication de ses derniers résultats financiers, le 30 octobre dernier. Avec 33 milliards de dollars de chiffre d’affaires sur le trimestre, en hausse de 20 % sur un an, la division cloud AWS était déjà sans aucun doute la principale raison de cette envolée boursière.

OpenAI diversifie ses partenariats

Quelles que soient les incertitudes qui entourent la vague de l’IA, AWS peut se targuer de compter un nouveau client prestigieux. OpenAI assure de son côté une forme de diversification nouvelle dans les ressources informatiques mises à sa disposition. Une approche plus œcuménique, rendue possible par l’évolution récente du contrat stratégique qui unit l’entreprise de Sam Altman à son partenaire historique et jusqu’ici exclusif en matière de cloud, Microsoft.

Fin octobre, les deux entreprises ont en effet renégocié les termes de leur contrat pour préparer la transformation d’OpenAI en une entreprise à but lucratif (même si toujours placée sous le contrôle d’une structure à but non lucratif). Selon les nouvelles conditions, OpenAI s’engage à consommer 250 milliards de dollars de cloud chez Microsoft Azure, mais se voit dans le même temps libéré de son exclusivité.

L’éditeur de ChatGPT, qui consomme le cash à vitesse grand V et étudie, d’après la rumeur, la possibilité d’une entrée en bourse à horizon 2026 - 2027, peut donc aller démarcher de nouveaux partenaires pour sécuriser les ressources informatiques nécessaires à la croissance stratosphérique envisagée par Sam Altman. Une valse des contrats, ou plutôt des promesses d’achat, qui porterait déjà sur des montants de l’ordre de 1 000 milliards de dollars…

S’assurer une présence chez Amazon, leader du secteur du cloud public, peut, dans ce contexte particulièrement spéculatif, être vu comme un élément de réassurance, et pas uniquement face aux problèmes de concentration illustrés par les récentes pannes mondiales d’AWS et d’Azure. Ce faisant, OpenAI met en effet un pied chez l’un des principaux partenaires de son concurrent Anthropic, éditeur des modèles Claude. Et confirme ainsi son ambition de devenir le barycentre des infrastructures mondiales dédiées au calcul IA…

Appetizer

Libéré de son exclusivité avec Microsoft, OpenAI n’a pas perdu de temps : l’éditeur de ChatGPT a annoncé mardi la conclusion d’un contrat d’envergure avec Amazon. Sa filiale dédiée au cloud, AWS, devrait ainsi mettre des ressources à disposition, à hauteur d’au moins 38 milliards de dollars sur sept ans. OpenAI s’assure ainsi une présence significative sur les infrastructures de deux des trois plus grands fournisseurs de cloud de la planète, et s’invite au passage sur les plate-bandes de son concurrent Anthropic.

La collaboration, qui débute immédiatement, prévoit déjà 38 milliards de dollars de dépenses sur sept ans, mais ce montant peut être amené à croître, affirment d’emblée les deux nouveaux partenaires. Amazon Web Services (AWS) et OpenAI ont en effet formalisé un accord stratégique de grande ampleur le 3 novembre, selon les termes duquel le premier mettra à la disposition du second ses infrastructures informatiques dans toutes les régions du monde.

Un nouveau client de taille et une infra à construire pour AWS

À très court terme, l’accord prévoit qu’OpenAI déploie ses modèles sur les infrastructures actuelles d’AWS, pour l’entraînement ou pour la fourniture du service ChatGPT aux clients finaux. Mais il est aussi question qu’Amazon construise des capacités fléchées vers OpenAI, avec un premier jalon (non chiffré) fixé à fin 2026, puis un programme d’expansion à partir de 2027.

« L’infrastructure qu’AWS est en train de construire pour OpenAI présente une architecture sophistiquée optimisée pour une efficacité et des performances maximales en matière de traitement de l’IA », promet Amazon, selon qui l’entreprise de Sam Altman va ainsi accéder à des « centaines de milliers de GPU NVIDIA », avec la possibilité d’associer ces derniers à des « dizaines de millions de CPU » pour sous-tendre le développement de ses produits commerciaux.

Si les deux partenaires communiquent sur l’enveloppe financière globale du contrat, aucun détail chiffré n’est donné, ni sous forme de nombre de machines, ni même sous forme de puissance électrique associée, quant à la capacité réelle des infrastructures prévues. AWS évoque simplement le recours à deux générations de puces NVIDIA (les GB200 et GB300 de classe Blackwell), et vante les mérites de l’interconnexion directe entre ces GPU et ses serveurs EC2.

En dépit de ce flou relatif, les 38 milliards de dollars annoncés ont fait gagner quelques points à l’action Amazon en bourse, alors que cette dernière caracolait déjà à des plus hauts historiques suite à la publication de ses derniers résultats financiers, le 30 octobre dernier. Avec 33 milliards de dollars de chiffre d’affaires sur le trimestre, en hausse de 20 % sur un an, la division cloud AWS était déjà sans aucun doute la principale raison de cette envolée boursière.

OpenAI diversifie ses partenariats

Quelles que soient les incertitudes qui entourent la vague de l’IA, AWS peut se targuer de compter un nouveau client prestigieux. OpenAI assure de son côté une forme de diversification nouvelle dans les ressources informatiques mises à sa disposition. Une approche plus œcuménique, rendue possible par l’évolution récente du contrat stratégique qui unit l’entreprise de Sam Altman à son partenaire historique et jusqu’ici exclusif en matière de cloud, Microsoft.

Fin octobre, les deux entreprises ont en effet renégocié les termes de leur contrat pour préparer la transformation d’OpenAI en une entreprise à but lucratif (même si toujours placée sous le contrôle d’une structure à but non lucratif). Selon les nouvelles conditions, OpenAI s’engage à consommer 250 milliards de dollars de cloud chez Microsoft Azure, mais se voit dans le même temps libéré de son exclusivité.

L’éditeur de ChatGPT, qui consomme le cash à vitesse grand V et étudie, d’après la rumeur, la possibilité d’une entrée en bourse à horizon 2026 - 2027, peut donc aller démarcher de nouveaux partenaires pour sécuriser les ressources informatiques nécessaires à la croissance stratosphérique envisagée par Sam Altman. Une valse des contrats, ou plutôt des promesses d’achat, qui porterait déjà sur des montants de l’ordre de 1 000 milliards de dollars…

S’assurer une présence chez Amazon, leader du secteur du cloud public, peut, dans ce contexte particulièrement spéculatif, être vu comme un élément de réassurance, et pas uniquement face aux problèmes de concentration illustrés par les récentes pannes mondiales d’AWS et d’Azure. Ce faisant, OpenAI met en effet un pied chez l’un des principaux partenaires de son concurrent Anthropic, éditeur des modèles Claude. Et confirme ainsi son ambition de devenir le barycentre des infrastructures mondiales dédiées au calcul IA…

Going all the way back to early 2024, Intel Linux engineers have been working on supporting an Adaptive Sharpening Filter new to Lunar Lake. While Lunar Lake later launched in September 2024, the Linux patches for this feature remained under review and discussion. Besides the Intel driver implementation itself for Lunar Lake and newer, it also ushers in a new DRM sharpness property to help standardize such functionality for user-space that could be used by other kernel graphics drivers. Finally with the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel, this Intel Content Adaptive Sharpness Filter "CASF" feature is being introduced to the mainline kernel...

Après le musée du gramophone, nous vous proposons un petit retour sur le matériel ADATA et XPG, avec de l'alim, du watercooling de l'aircooling, du boitier, de la mémoire, des SSD et des cartes mèmoire, rien de plus normal, quand on est chez le numéro 2 mondial de la mémoire. […]

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On vous propose, presque en direct de Taipei, une vidéo sur un musée totalement insolite et qui se trouve chez ADATA, le fabricant de mémoire. Et ce musée, porte sur les gramophones, car le directeur de la marque Simon Chen est un fan inconditionnel de ces machines et des vinyles. […]

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