Geek News

Amazon has begun designing its own AI chips, according to an exclusive report from The Information . The hardware is designed for anything powered by Alexa, including the Echo, and would allow the virtual assistant to respond more quickly by adding speech recognition directly to the device. Right now, whenever a user makes an inquiry on an Alexa-powered device, there is a delay while the virtual assistant contacts the cloud in order to interpret the request. While Echo devices would continue to rely on the cloud for complex inquiries, adding speech recognition directly would allow Alexa to perform simple tasks, such as checking the time, without that cloud delay. Amazon acquired chip designer Annapurna Labs back in 2015, and has slowly begun churning out its own processors. It was only a matter of time before it started designing and producing chips specifically for its own hardware needs. The company has also begin hiring chip engineers for Amazon Web Services, signaling that it ...

If you're part of the Windows Insiders Fast Ring (or have opted to skip ahead), you'll find the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17074 available to download. Of note is the addition of Quiet Hours, which functions similarly to the Mac Do Not Disturb feature. You can set your own schedule, during which you will only receive notifications from people and apps in your priority list. The feature will also automatically switch on when you're playing full screen DirectX game and when you're duplicating your display. There are quite a few other improvements included in this build; many focus on the reading experience within Windows 10. There are new grammar tools for both EPUB books and Reading View on websites. Additionally, Microsoft Edge has a new look for reading across EPUBs, PDFs and other documents, as well as syncing reading progress and notes across devices. The build also includes support for custom audio in EPUB. The build adds an option to never save passwords...