Kalakshar US

GM says it will support vehicle-to-home (V2H) bidirectional charging on all of its electric vehicles with Ultium battery technology by model year 2026. The first vehicles that will support the tech include the 2024 model year Chevrolet Silverado EV RST, GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1, Chevrolet Blazer EV, Chevy Equinox EV, Cadillac Lyriq and Cadillac Escalade IQ — the company is set to reveal the latter on August 9th. There’s no indication as to when the upcoming Ultium-based Chevy Bolt will support V2H.

Severalautomakers are adopting V2H technology, which enables owners to power their home in a pinch using their EV. It’s an option that can come in very useful during a blackout or even to save money by drawing from the EV’s battery when electrical grid prices are high. You can still charge your EV by connecting it to your home’s power supply, of course.

Last year, GM announced a spin-off business called GM Energy that includes a division focused on home energy management solutions such as V2H. In June, GM Energy revealed some of its residential hardware, which includes systems with V2H support, so it was only a matter of time until GM started enabling the tech on its vehicles.

Owners of Ultium EVs will be able to manage the transfer of energy between their vehicle and home using the GM Energy Cloud software platform. GM says it will reveal more details about when it will start enabling the tech in its vehicles at a later date.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gm-will-enable-vehicle-to-home-charging-on-all-ultium-based-evs-164248583.html?src=rss 

Apple is testing variants of the M3 chip, according toBloomberg, with the first Macs running the new Apple Silicon potentially arriving as early as October. The high-end laptop chip, the M3 Max, will reportedly have four more high-performance CPU cores and at least two additional graphical cores compared to the M2 Max, which only arrived in January.

The company is reportedly testing new iMacs, 13-inch MacBook Pros, 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs and Mac minis — all running the M3 chip and expected within the next 12 months. Updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips won’t likely arrive until 2024.

The company could move on an aggressive Mac release schedule as its desktop and laptop computer line struggles to regain its sales footing after a pandemic-era boom. Although it launched a 15-inch MacBook Air in June and new models of the MacBook Pro and Mac mini in January, we could see more new Mac hardware this fall. (The company hinted in its earnings call last week that new Macs wouldn’t arrive until after the fiscal fourth quarter, which concludes at the end of September.) Bloomberg reports Apple is indeed planning an October product launch.

The base M3 chip will reportedly use the same configuration as the M2: eight processor cores and up to 10 graphical cores. However, the M3 Pro will start at 12 CPU cores and 18 graphical cores, and test logs suggest the M3 Max will include 16 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores. Of course, Apple is likely testing multiple variants of core-count options, and we don’t yet know which versions will make it to consumers.

The M3 chip has been long-rumored to shift to TSMC’s upcoming 3-nanometer process for expected performance and efficiency improvements over the 5nm process used in the M2. Apple is also widely expected to use the 3nm process for the A17 chip in the upcoming iPhone 15 series.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-is-reportedly-testing-m3-chips-for-new-macs-arriving-this-fall-173457588.html?src=rss 

The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation into Adobe’s planned $20 billion purchase of design rival Figma. The EU said it’s concerned about the acquisition diminishing competition for interactive design software and digital asset creation tools.

The EU Commission has until December 14th to make a decision. “With our in-depth investigation we aim to ensure that users continue to have access to a wide pool of digital creative tools to choose from,” European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said in a statement to Reuters. Engadget asked Adobe for comment, but the company didn’t immediately respond. (We’ll update this article if it does.)

The move echoes a similar move from the UK last month when its Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched its own in-depth investigation into the transaction. The UK has until December 27th to complete its “phase two” review.

The transaction would be the largest-ever purchase for Adobe. The San Francisco-based Figma, founded in 2012, quickly grew in popularity and became a go-to tool for vector design and remote collaboration. The company’s products compete directly with Adobe XD and Illustrator. Adobe has previously said it wants to incorporate Creative Cloud suite features into Figma while adding some of Figma’s collaborative capabilities to its core products. It said at the time of the acquisition’s announcement that it was “deeply committed” to keeping Figma independent and said there was “no plan” to change its pricing or remove its free tier.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/adobes-20-billion-purchase-of-figma-is-being-scrutinized-by-the-eu-160532767.html?src=rss 

The beta version of Spotify’s AI-enhanced DJ feature is coming to 50 new countries, after soft-launching in the US and Canada back in February. In recent months, it’s rolled out in the UK and Ireland, but now the robotic Wolfman Jack is headed to more countries in Europe, Asia and Africa, in addition to Australia and New Zealand.

There’s a caveat, but it depends on some initial understanding of what this tool actually does. The Spotify DJ is available to premium subscription members and provides algorithmic recommendations of what to listen to, just like any music streaming app. However, these recommendations are accompanied by AI-generated DJ commentary on what you’re listening to. So what’s the rub? The DJ, based on Spotify’s Xavier Jernigan, only speaks English, no matter where you live. This is not a big deal for Australia and New Zealand, but an annoying constraint for listeners in Ghana, Singapore and most other parts of the world. A Spotify spokesperson told Engadget that the company has “no more news to share on new languages at this time.”

Despite the language limitation, it’s still a nifty toolset. It combines OpenAI’s proprietary large language model (LLM) technology, which powers ChatGPT, with Sonantic’s AI voice generation platform. Spotify bought Sonantic last year, largely due to its focus on generating realistic speech. In addition to the AI-enhanced speech, the platform also gives for written information as to why a particular song was chosen.

This tool is available today for Spotify Premium users across the world, but this is a beta, so expect changes and improvements in the short-term and long-term future. Spotify says that it is “continuing to iterate and innovate the experience.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotifys-new-ai-dj-expands-to-50-countries-162852829.html?src=rss 

The UK’s Electoral Commission has revealed that some personal information of around 40 million voters was left exposed for over a year. The agency — which regulates party and election finance and elections in the country — said it was the target of a “complex cyberattack.” It first detected suspicious activity on its network in October 2022, but said the intruders first gained access to its systems in August 2021.

The perpetrators found a way onto to the Electoral Commission’s servers, which hosted the agency’s email and control systems, as well as copies of the electoral registers. Details of donations and loans to registered political parties and non-party campaigners were not affected as those are stored on a separate system. The agency doesn’t hold the details of anonymous voters or the addresses of overseas electors registered outside of the UK.

The data that was exposed included the names and addresses of UK residents who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, along with those who are registered as overseas voters. Information provided to the commission through email and web forms was exposed too. 

“We know that this data was accessible, but we have been unable to ascertain whether the attackers read or copied personal data held on our systems,” the commission said. The agency confirmed to TechCrunch that the attack could have affected around 40 million voters. According to UK census data, there were 46.6 million parliamentary electoral registrations and 48.8 million local government electoral registrations in December 2021.

The Electoral Commission says it had to adopt several measures before disclosing the hack. It had to lock out the “hostile actors,” analyze the possible extent of the breach and put more security measures in place to stop a similar situation from happening in the future.

Data in the electoral registers is limited and much of it is in the public domain already, the agency said. As such, officials don’t believe the data by itself represents a major risk to individuals. However, the agency warned, it’s possible that the information “could be combined with other data in the public domain, such as that which individuals choose to share themselves, to infer patterns of behavior or to identify and profile individuals.”

The Electoral Commission also noted that there was no impact on UK election security as a result of the attack. “The data accessed does not impact how people register, vote, or participate in democratic processes,” it said. “It has no impact on the management of the electoral registers or on the running of elections. The UK’s democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting. This means it would be very hard to use a cyber-attack to influence the process.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hack-left-majority-of-uk-voters-data-exposed-for-over-a-year-150045052.html?src=rss