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Anthropic says it has vastly expanded the amount of information its generative AI, Claude, is able to process. Claude has gone from having a limit of 9,000 tokens to 100,000 tokens, which corresponds to roughly 75,000 words. That’s a full novel. To put that into perspective, Claude now has the ability to easily read and finish Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (74,240 words), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (74,800 words) and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (69,000 words). And, as The Verge notes, the company says Claude can read and analyze information from each book in under a minute. 

Generative AIs like Claude are still limited by the number of “tokens” they can process. As OpenAI explains in its help page, you can think of tokens as pieces of words. The AI cuts up words for processing, and they’re not always chopped up from the start to the end of each word, since spaces and other characters are also included. At the moment, OpenAI’s standard GPT-4 model is capable of processing 8,000 tokens, while an extended version can process 32,000 tokens. Meanwhile, its publicly available ChatGPT chatbot has a limit of around 4,000 tokens. 

Now Claude has a much wider context window than all of them. According to Anthropic, it loaded Great Gatsby onto the AI during testing and modified a single line to say Mr. Carraway was “a software engineer that works on machine learning tooling at Anthropic.” Claude was able to spot how the book was modified within 22 seconds. 

The AI’s expanded context window is now available to Anthropic’s business partners who are using its API. Anthropic says the capability will help businesses quickly digest and summarize lengthy financial statements and research papers, assess pieces of legislation, identify risks and arguments across legal documents and comb through dense developer documentation, among other possible tasks. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/anthropic-says-its-claude-ai-can-now-read-a-whole-book-in-under-a-minute-120114018.html?src=rss 

It’s a huge week for news: Google I/O happened, and we finally got a close look at the Pixel Fold and the company’s latest AI plans. Engadget Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham also joins to discuss his review of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the follow-up to one of the greatest games ever made. (No pressure, Nate!) We also chat about Nintendo’s confirmation that it won’t be announcing any new hardware until next year, and the perils of chatbots serving as the latest avatars for Hindu gods in India.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

Google’s Pixel Fold was finally announced (it’s $1,799) – 1:25

Also announced at Google I/O: a ton of Bard integration in search, Pixel Tablet and Pixel 7a – 14:43

Nate Ingraham’s Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review – 39:29

Nintendo says no new hardware will be announced this year – 52:51

Roku is doing home security now – 56:40

AI Updates: Religious chatbots run the risk of sparking violence in India – 58:12

Working on – 1:03:45

Pop culture picks – 1:05:43

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Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos
Graphic artist: Luke Brooks and Joel Chokkattu

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-pixel-fold-zelda-tears-of-kingdom-123028977.html?src=rss 

Tinder is for finding love — or at least a temporary connection — but the app’s backers aren’t interested in helping people expand their connections beyond the narrow confines of its own jurisdiction. The company says that it has identified an issue with users turning their profiles into spaces for “making money,” and will scrub social handles from public profiles, as well as tweaking its community guidelines to prohibit the sharing of usernames or references to other outbound links. In a statement rich in euphemism, the platform reminds users not to “advertise, promote social handles or links to gain followers, sell things, fundraise or campaign,” which we suspect includes users who add their Linktree username to guide people toward online stores or content marketplaces.

The policy change comes as part of a series of updated community guidelines that Tinder claims will “reinforce authenticity, respect and inclusivity.” Besides the social handle removal, most of the policies are requests to users, such as telling people to respect boundaries and not to share private chats in a public setting. The dating app points to its younger membership (most users are 18 to 25) as motivation for making these appeals. “To guide these younger daters as they start their dating journey, Tinder is using this policy refresh to remind and educate members about healthy dating habits — both online and in real life,” Ehren Schlue, SVP of Member Strategy at Tinder, said in a statement.

It’s unclear how exactly Tinder plans to scrub social handles from bios or prevent people from sharing them in chats instead. The company encourages users to report anyone violating the rule, but a quick bio share over messages might not motivate anyone to do so. Removing social handles also interferes with people who share them to circumvent swipe limits or remove the need to match. Plus, there’s the issue of determining if a person is who they say they are. Alongside the social handles announcement, Tinder reminds people to be honest and not create fake personas. But, without any access to a person’s social media, it might be harder to know for sure. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tinder-is-eliminating-social-media-handles-from-public-bios-103001873.html?src=rss 

Twitch has a new clip editor that will make it much, much easier for streamers to promote their content across platforms that put a focus on mobile users. Streamers will find the new editor under the clip manager in their creator dashboard. As TechCrunch notes, clicking “edit and share clip” will open a tool that’ll give them an easy way to create vertical video clips. They can choose to create a video that shows one portion of their stream in full or to create a clip that splits the view between their stream and their camera. Either way, they’re getting a vertical video they can share. 

There’s also a toggle at the bottom of the editor they can switch on to add their channel name to the clip. After they decide on what their video snippet will look like, they can then either download it or share it straight to YouTube Shorts with a title and a description that they’d written. While the feature only comes with YouTube integration right now, Twitch seems to have plans to add quick sharing for other platforms in the future. For now, creators will have to manually upload their videos if they want to promote their streams through Instagram Reels, Snapchat and TikTok. The still entails a bit more work than sharing on YouTube Shorts, but by doing so, they’re putting themselves in front of more potential viewers who could end up being loyal subscribers. 

The new vertical clip editor is making its way to all users’ clip manager this week. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitchs-new-clip-editor-makes-it-easier-to-create-vertical-videos-092950134.html?src=rss 

Abbey Games has officially revealed that a sequel to its indie god sim Reus is “on the way,” almost a full decade after the original came out for Windows PCs. The original game received mostly favorable reviews after it shipped, and the developer sold over one million copies worldwide. Abbey Games founders Maarten Wiedenhof, Manuel Kerssemakers and Adriaan Jansen said: “The original Reus is a decade old, and much has changed in the gaming world. We’re excited to bring Reus 2 to this new era, and show what it can bring to all those who want to create their own perfect world!” 

In Reus 2, players will have the ability to create multiple planets as their elemental giant god characters. They can shape those planets however they want to see how the people that live there would react to the unique landscapes that surround them and the challenges they encounter. And by “challenges they encounter,” we mean whatever the player decides to put them through. Hey, it’s a god sim — players can choose to make it easy for the people living on one planet and then put another planet’s population through the wringer. They can even stage an apocalypse and start anew. Aren’t you glad we’re not living in a simulation? (…Or are we?)

The developer says Reus 2 is still currently in development. It doesn’t have a release date yet, but those interested can now add it to their Steam wishlist. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/abbey-games-unveils-sequel-to-god-simulation-game-reus-053804152.html?src=rss 

Peloton has had a rough couple of years after pandemic restrictions lifted and people returned to working out at the gym and outside. Now, the company has suffered yet another body blow. A voluntary recall has been issued for 2.2 million Peloton Bikes sold in the US between January 2018 and this month because of seat post safety concerns. “The original Peloton Bike seat post can break unexpectedly during use, creating a potential fall and injury risk,” Peloton said in a statement. 

A recall notice on the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website urges consumers to “immediately stop using the recalled exercise bikes and contact Peloton for a free repair.” However, Peloton won’t have to eat the cost of returning millions of bikes to its facilities and sending them back out to customers after repairs. The company will send out a free seat post that consumers can install by themselves.

According to the CPSC, there have been 35 reported instances of the seat post breaking and detaching from the Bike during use, causing users to fall in some cases. Those incidents resulted in 13 reports of injuries, including a fractured wrist, lacerations and bruises.

This is not the first time that there have been reports of injuries related to Peloton products. Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay $19 million to settle CPSC charges that it didn’t immediately disclose reports of people, pets and objects being pulled under the rear of the Tread+. The CPSC said that by the time it received a report from Peloton about such issues, there had been more than 150 such incidents, one of which resulted in a child’s death. Other people sustained injuries including broken bones, lacerations, abrasions and friction burns.

The settlement and Bike recall come after a brutal 2022 for Peloton, in which the company laid off thousands of workers. It tried other tactics to cut costs and increase revenue, including a switch to third-party manufacturing and adjusting prices of its products. However, the company posted a larger loss than expected in its most recent earnings report.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/peloton-recalls-22-million-bikes-over-safety-issues-170641578.html?src=rss 

In a potentially encouraging sign for reducing environmental waste, researchers have discovered microbes from the Alps and the Arctic that can break down plastic without requiring high temperatures. Although this is only a preliminary finding, a more efficient and effective breakdown of industrial plastic waste in landfills would give scientists a new tool for trying to reduce its ecological damage.

Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute WSL published their findings this week in Frontiers in Microbiology, detailing how cold-adapted bacteria and fungus from polar regions and the Swiss Alps digested most of the plastics they tested — while only needing low to average temperatures. That last part is critical because plastic-eating microorganisms tend to need impractically high temperatures to work their magic. “Several microorganisms that can do this have already been found, but when their enzymes that make this possible are applied at an industrial scale, they typically only work at temperatures above [30 degrees Celsius / 86 degrees Fahrenheit],” the researchers explained. “The heating required means that industrial applications remain costly to date, and aren’t carbon-neutral.”

Unfortunately, none of the microorganisms tested succeeded at breaking down non-biodegradable polyethylene (PE), one of the most challenging plastics commonly found in consumer products and packaging. (They failed at degrading PE even after 126 days of incubation on the material.) But 56 percent of the strains tested decomposed biodegradable polyester-polyurethane (PUR) at 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). Others digested commercially available biodegradable mixtures of polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) and polylactic acid (PLA). The two most successful strains were fungi from the genera Neodevriesia and Lachnellula: They broke down every plastic tested other than the formidable PE.

Plastics are too recent an invention for the microorganisms to have evolved specifically to break them down. But the researchers highlight how natural selection equipping them to break down cutin, a protective layer in plants that shares much in common with plastics, played a part. “Microbes have been shown to produce a wide variety of polymer-degrading enzymes involved in the break-down of plant cell walls. In particular, plant-pathogenic fungi are often reported to biodegrade polyesters, because of their ability to produce cutinases which target plastic polymers due [to] their resemblance to the plant polymer cutin,” said co-author Dr. Beat Frey.

The researchers see promise in their findings but warn that hurdles remain. “The next big challenge will be to identify the plastic-degrading enzymes produced by the microbial strains and to optimize the process to obtain large amounts of proteins,” said Frey. “In addition, further modification of the enzymes might be needed to optimize properties such as protein stability.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/scientists-discover-microbes-that-can-digest-plastics-at-cool-temperatures-173419885.html?src=rss