Good morning, and a happy Wednesday to you. Let’s get into the tech news, shall we?
1. Ola says adios Australia
Uber competitor Ola is the latest rideshare option to quit Australia, following inDrive’s withdrawal, leaving DiDi as the only major rival to the Silicon Valley giant, per The Australian. “Ola’s exit shows how critical it is to get standards in place to lift pay and make transport gig jobs safe, secure and sustainable.” TWU national secretary Michael Kaine said. The move took users and drivers by surprise, with services to end down under on April 12.
2. Starlink terminals reportedly being used by Russia in Ukraine
The WSJ’s reports that SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink is being used to coordinate attacks in Eastern Ukraine. It’s also being reported that the internet service is being used to pilot drones and other military tech. The Starlink terminals are supposedly getting into Russian hands via black market operations, with the WSJ following smugglers in their delivery to Russian troops.
3. Tesla settles on fatal autopilot crash
The Guardian reports that Tesla has settled a lawsuit over the fatal crash of an Apple engineer who was using the company’s autopilot tech in San Francisco. The settlement ends a five-year legal battle, though the terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. The engineer’s Tesla veered off the road and crashed, with the man found to be using his phone just prior to the accident by road safety authorities. “There is no dispute that, had he been paying attention to the road he would have had the opportunity to avoid this crash,” Tesla said in a court statement.
4. Intel to take on Nvidia with new chip
Intel wants to bring the fight to Nvidia with a new chip focused on AI processing, Reuters reports. The Gaudi 3 chip, was discussed at the company’s ‘Vision’ event this week, with it tipped to be 50 per cent faster at training certain large language models than Nvidia’s processor. “Our customers, first and foremost, are asking for choice in the industry,” Intel vice president of strategy and product management Jeni Barovian said. After Gaudi 3, Intel’s next chips will be codenamed ‘Falcon Shores’.
5. Meta’s Llama 3 is coming in May
Meta’s next open-source large language model is coming in May, Tech Crunch reports. “There will be a number of different models with different capabilities, different versatilities [released] during the course of this year, starting really very soon,” Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg said. “Within the next month, actually less, hopefully in a very short period of time, we hope to start rolling out our new suite of next-generation foundation models, Llama 3.” Meta’s been a bit slow on the AI front compared to giants like Google and Microsoft, and this next launch is hoped to be the base for powering multiple products.
BONUS ITEM: I’m going to use some of these.
Over and snout. ✍️
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Have a lovely day.
Image: Ola