Author: The Tech Guy

Something I’ve noticed is that some PC owners — and Mac owners, for that matter — are hesitant to adopt new tech on their computer. This makes a certain amount of sense, since many people use their PCs for work and other critical tasks, and the last anything anyone wants to do is interfere with their workflow for a change that might not be an improvement at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, in other words. That explains why so many machines are still on Windows 10, despite a looming support shutdown and the availability of free upgrades…

Researchers at Mila have proposed a new technique that makes large language models (LLMs) vastly more efficient when performing complex reasoning. Called Markovian Thinking, the approach allows LLMs to engage in lengthy reasoning without incurring the prohibitive computational costs that currently limit such tasks.The team’s implementation, an environment named Delethink, structures the reasoning chain into fixed-size chunks, breaking the scaling problem that plagues very long LLM responses. Initial estimates show that for a 1.5B parameter model, this method can cut the costs of training by more than two-thirds compared to standard approaches.The quadratic curse of long-chain reasoningFor an LLM to…

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Taylor Hill / Getty ; Noam Galai / Getty Images for WSJ. Magazine Innovators Awards Billie Eilish may be soft-spoken, but she doesn’t shy away from speaking her mind. On Wednesday evening in New York City, the Grammy-winning artist accepted the Music Innovator Award at WSJ Magazine‘s Innovator Awards ceremony — and took the opportunity to ruffle rich people’s feathers during her acceptance speech. “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in…

Enlarge Image I especially dig the Sportage’s new boomerang-shaped LED light signature. Antuan Goodwin/CNETThe latest iteration of the Kia Sportage  gets a major glow-up. Kia has been aggressively pushing the design of its vehicles to the point that this muscular 2023 Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige looks of a completely different lineage to the cute, small SUV it replaces. (Heck, it’s barely recognizable as a Kia’s .) And behind that wild styling is a sweet new hybrid powertrain, vastly improved cabin tech and the automaker’s latest driver-assistance technology. Like Head-turning, spacious design Smooth and efficient new hybrid system Excellent mix of…

Finding genuinely useful Android apps shouldn’t feel like a chore, but too often it does. Most mainstream tools either lock core features behind paywalls or push ads so hard that you end up frustrated, forcing you to either buy the app or uninstall it. Still, there are a few free apps that I genuinely find useful. I’ve been using them for quite some time now, and they’ve quietly become part of my daily routine without demanding constant attention or updates. These three apps stood out because they’re refreshingly straightforward. No lengthy tutorials, no premium tiers hiding the useful features, and…

The England vs Australia live stream kicks off the Autumn Nations Series 2025 on Saturday and has all the makings of a classic between the two old foes. Both teams are fast-improving after an inconsistent few years and Steve Borthwick’s hosts will be determined to put right a late defeat in this fixture last year.Borthwick has kept faith with the majority of the touring side that won a series in Argentina earlier this summer, which means the England coach has named six British & Irish Lions on a stacked bench, including Test match animal Tom Curry and hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie,…

Researchers at Nvidia have developed a novel approach to train large language models (LLMs) in 4-bit quantized format while maintaining their stability and accuracy at the level of high-precision models. Their technique, NVFP4, makes it possible to train models that not only outperform other leading 4-bit formats but match the performance of the larger 8-bit FP8 format, all while using half the memory and a fraction of the compute.The success of NVFP4 shows that enterprises can continue to cut inference costs by running leaner models that match the performance of larger ones. It also hints at a future where the…

Elon Musk predicts that traditional smartphones will evolve into lightweight edge nodes optimized for AI inference rather than standalone hardware. This is a broader architectural transformation driven by AI advancements. Musk describes the future device (formerly known as a phone) as an edge node for AI inference particularly for AI video inference. It would feature minimal hardware—essentially a screen, audio output, radios for connectivity and on-device AI processing to handle local computations. The heavy lifting happens via seamless communication between on-device AI and massive server-side AI models. The device will generate real-time video of anything that you could possibly want.…

If you buy a flagship on launch day, you get perks like more memory or freebies, but if you wait, you get discounts instead. And you don’t necessarily need a flagship either, not when premium mid-rangers are this good. Let’s look at both options. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip7 price has hit a new low – it’s now under €800. This puts it between the vanilla Galaxy S25 and the S25+. The flip foldable offers a new form factor experience, unlike the S-phones, which haven’t changed much in the last few years. The Z Flip7 has a 4.1” cover and…

Document databases are an increasingly important type of technology in the gen AI era.A document database is a type of NoSQL database that doesn't rely on rows and columns like a traditional relational database, instead it uses the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. There are multiple vendors that develop document databases including MongoDB, which now has a proprietary closed source technology. In an effort to open up the market, Microsoft began developing its own document database known as DocumentDB and made it open source in January of this year. This week, DocumentDB is moving to the Linux Foundation where it…