Matter and Thread: Revolutionising the Smart Home.
Written by Muhammad Shah
Matter and Thread are two new technologies that are revolutionizing the way we interact with smart devices in our homes. They are designed to make it easier for consumers to control and automate the devices in their homes, and are poised to become a major player in the smart home market.
Matter is a new smart home platform that is being developed by the consortium of industry leaders including Google, Amazon, and the Zigbee Alliance. The platform is based on open standards and is designed to allow smart devices from different manufacturers to work together seamlessly. This will eliminate the need for multiple apps and hubs, making it easier for consumers to control their devices and create automations.
Thread is a new low-power, secure, and scalable network protocol that is being developed by the Thread Group. It is designed to work with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and will provide a secure and reliable way to connect devices to the Internet. This will make it easier for consumers to control their devices from anywhere in the world, and will also make it easier for manufacturers to create new and innovative products.
Together, Matter and Thread are changing the smart home landscape and are poised to become the standard for the industry. They are designed to make it easier for consumers to control their devices, and to make it easier for manufacturers to create new products. This will lead to a more seamless and integrated smart home experience, and will make it easier for consumers to enjoy the benefits of smart devices in their homes.
There are already several devices that have received confirmation of receiving support via updates in the future. These include the Nest Hub Max, Google Nest Mini, and the Nest Wifi, as well as several other popular devices from other manufacturers. This support is expected to be rolled out over the next few months, and will make it easier for consumers to control their devices and create automations.
In conclusion, Matter and Thread are two new technologies that are poised to revolutionize the way we interact with smart devices in our homes. They are designed to make it easier for consumers to control their devices and create automations, and are expected to become the standard for the industry. With support already confirmed for several popular devices, it is clear that Matter and Thread are the future of the smart home.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, gains rights to acquire another VR startup.
Written by Rayan Nadeem
A California judge has allowed Meta, formerly known as Facebook, to proceed with its acquisition of virtual reality fitness start-up Within, despite a pending antitrust case brought forward by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC had sued Meta in July 2022, arguing that the acquisition of Within, the maker of the popular VR app Supernatural, would expand Meta's dominance in the consumer VR market. The FTC also cited Meta's previous merger with the company behind Beat Saber, claiming that the addition of Within would eliminate a “beneficial rivalry” between the two companies.
However, the court denied the FTC's request to block the deal, giving the FTC one week to appeal. In December, Meta agreed to delay its acquisition of Within until January 31st. The court's ruling stated that as a VR platform developer, Meta can enjoy the benefits of VR fitness growth without itself intervening in the VR fitness app market. The FTC's pursuit of the case stands in stark contrast to Meta's previous acquisitions, including its purchase of VR start-up Oculus in 2014.
The FTC's internal disagreements and the court's decision to allow the Meta-Within acquisition could indicate an uphill battle for the FTC to limit tech industry consolidation, despite persistent attempts to give antitrust watchdogs more power. If the court's order stands, it would represent a loss for FTC head and antitrust crusader Lina Khan, especially as the FTC is also fighting to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision. The two cases differ, particularly in the small size of the VR market compared to the overall games industry and the FTC's focus on the market for fitness VR apps in the Within case, not VR or games in general.
Firstly, this is a really important case as it signifies how large companies often swallow up smaller ones, and Meta is not an exception. Rather it has led by example: in 2012, it acquired what would go on to be one of the world’s largest social media platforms, i.e. Instagram. In 2014, it acquired Oculus, the world’s leading provider of consumer VR headsets, with the Oculus Quest 2 being its latest device. Other companies that have been known to “swallow” up smaller firms include Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) etc. By acquiring these companies, they are reducing competition and bringing their customers to them. Furthermore, it also gives them access to cutting edge research that they would like to incorporate into their own products.
But why is this important? Well, Meta has been trying to lead development for the “metaverse”, and even named itself after it to emphasise their efforts. By eating up the competition, they are building themselves a nice monopoly, making sure the future is based on their efforts, kind of like the base of the metaverse. Through this, they are not only able to secure their future as a company, but also make sure they’re dominating the tech in the coming years.
What do you think? Does this acquisition spell doom, or is it more good-willed than it seems? Reply to this email with your thoughts and share it with your friends!
Programming News
Written by Joel Swedensky
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot released by OpenAI in late
November last year, based off their model GPT-3 used for natural language processing. It has
sparked huge interest as its key focus is on generating extremely human-like natural
sounding responses - and it does this very well. (Try it out yourself and see).
Already, people have been using the site for many things - mostly fun. Realistically,
practical applications should use the more general GPT-3 model to get better results, so the
AI chatbot only serves to be used for fun. Since it's so good at generating natural-sounding
language, people have asked it hilarious prompts such as a debate between Donald
and Daffy Duck in the style of Shakespeare. The AI clearly understands humour, to an
extent, such as when asked to write a 3-line
poem. It has also been used to generate clickbaity
titles and new
colours...
Crucially, the chatbot does not have access to the internet. While this is generally a good
idea to allow the bot to run in a controlled environment (and avoid taking over the world),
it means it has no way to verify information; if you ask it a question about information
after 2021 (when it was trained), it does not know at all, stating
my knowledge was cut off in 2021, and I am not able to browse the web or access new information. Can I help you with anything else?Generally, if you ask it for a fact, however, it is often extremely overconfident in its response, even if it's not correct. Like claiming a banana is bigger than a cat. Even though a cat has bigger dimensions. Really. This is potentially dangerous as it is in some ways better at lying than humans, and can be used to generate trustworthy sounding text which can be used to mislead.
So much is this problem that stackoverflow - the (in)famous programming Q&A site - banned the AI, claiming that
Overall, because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking and looking for correct answers.People, potentially well-meaning, had been looking to help out on questions extremely fast - by asking ChatGPT - and copy-pasting the response without checking its truth, leading to misinformation spreading through the site.
While the ban is great in theory, it's not that easy to detect - or wasn't, until GPTZero arrived at the beginning of the year. It has already received over 7 million views and can detect ChatGPT's writing style - using the same technology that ChatGPT is built upon. It measures "perplexity" of the text - how random it is. Humans tend to have a much higher score of perplexity, and the tool gives you statistical information on the perplexity of sentences in the text before giving its verdict. This could be very useful for stopping ai-plagiarism in education. "Plagiarism" of AI has been a controversial subject recently, specifically pertaining to AI art, such as Dall-E 2 (also by OpenAI). While the art looks a lot fantastic, several questions are under debate - whether the prompter or the AI made it, for a start; and also the ethics of the training data used for the AI: should all artists whose images were trained on be credited?
ChatGPT is a showcase of great advancements in natural language AI, which has come extremely far from when Alan Turing created the Imitation Game (aka Turing Test), to Eugene Goostman passing it and developing much more since then. However, many ethical issues arise from it that do need to be adressed.
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