All posts tagged: suite

xAI launches Grok 4.3 at an aggressively low price and a new, fast, powerful voice cloning suite

xAI launches Grok 4.3 at an aggressively low price and a new, fast, powerful voice cloning suite

Published by skeptic

While Elon Musk faces off against his former colleague and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman in court, Musk’s rival firm xAI, founded to take on OpenAI, isn’t slowing down on launching competitive new products and services. Last night, xAI shipped a new, proprietary base large language model (LLM), Grok 4.3, and a new voice cloning suite on the web. The new products arrive after months of tumult from xAI that saw all of Musk’s 10 original co-founders of the lab and dozens more researchers exit the firm and Grok was eclipsed on performance by many new competing LLMs from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Chinese firms DeepSeek, Moonshot (Kimi), Alibaba (Qwen), z.ai, and others. While Grok 4.3 does mark a significant leap in performance on third-party benchmarks over its direct predecessor Grok 4.2, according to the independent AI model evaluation firm Artificial Analysis, it still remains below the state-of-the-art set by OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest models. But the marquee feature of the Grok brand has — other than Musk’s stated opposition to “wokeness” and …

LG Sound Suite Review: Big Sound for Larger Rooms

LG Sound Suite Review: Big Sound for Larger Rooms

Published by skeptic

Setup was relatively quick and painless. You just have to unbox four speakers, a soundbar, and a subwoofer, attach their power cables, and plug in everything. Pairing happens through the LG ThinQ app, which allows you to set up the Sound Suite system and tune it to exactly where you’re sitting in the room using your cell phone’s microphone. You can also set up each speaker to play music and group it with any other LG smart speakers you might have around your home, like the more affordable $250 M5 bookshelf speaker, to create a whole-home system. Once all the components were synced, I plugged the soundbar into the C5 OLED via HDMI, and was able to easily control everything via the TV remote’s volume and mute buttons. More in-depth settings had to happen in the app, but if you’re anything like me, this won’t become a regular chore. You’ll set it how you like it once and move on. While the pairing functionality with the LG TV was nice, it’s not required–the eARC port …

On Location Packages Offer Premium Seating, Suite Access

On Location Packages Offer Premium Seating, Suite Access

Published by Daniella Wilson

Ready, set, buy! In tandem with today’s news that LA28 tickets are available for pre-sale for residents in select California and Oklahoma counties — with sales to the general public opening April 9 — On Location has made its hospitality packages available for purchase. LA28’s official hospitality provider is selling ticket-inclusive packages with a variety of offerings to pick from like premium seats, priority entry, lounge access, entertainment, athlete meet-and-greets, elevated food and beverage choices and more. Packages for most events like track and field, baseball, basketball, flag football, soccer finals (at the Rose Bowl), swimming, and opening and closing ceremonies are on sale today while sports like badminton, cricket, diving, equestrian, soccer (in other metropolitan areas) and rhythmic gymnastics will be available later in the year. On Location has three tiers of hospitality packages with leisure, premium and signature. The former is the base level package while premium packages include access to a shared lounge within the Olympic venue with access to elevated food and beverage options, a social scene and premium seats. Signature packages are …

I found a browser-based creative suite and it being open-source is only part of the appeal

I found a browser-based creative suite and it being open-source is only part of the appeal

Published by skeptic

I have a love-hate relationship with creative software. The tools that are good enough to rely on professionally can cost a small fortune, and the free alternatives come with their own learning curve and drawbacks. That said, the fact that open-source alternatives for Adobe programs exist gives me hope. That hope led me to Graphite, a browser-based, fully open-source 2D design tool. I tried it, thinking it’d be like another browser-based Photoshop clone. Instead, I found a fully capable design tool I can spin up in any browser, any machine. The best part? It has very little to do with the price tag. It runs in your browser, but doesn’t act like it Yes, Graphite runs in your browser, whatever that may be. It’s free to use, and the source code is available in the official GitHub repository under an Apache 2.0 license. But considering it as just another free Illustrator or Photoshop alternative you can open in a tab massively undersells what it’s meant for. There are creative tools that are free, and professionals …

A suite of government hacking tools targeting iPhones is now being used by cybercriminals

A suite of government hacking tools targeting iPhones is now being used by cybercriminals

Published by skeptic

Security researchers have identified a suite of powerful hacking tools capable of compromising iPhones running older software that they say has passed from a government customer into the hands of cybercriminals. Google said Tuesday that it first identified the exploit kit, dubbed Coruna, in February 2025 during a surveillance vendor’s attempt to hack into someone’s phone with spyware on behalf of a government customer. It found the same exploit kit months later targeting Ukrainian users in a broad-scale campaign by a Russian espionage group, and then later found it used by a financially motivated hacker in China. It’s unclear how the tools leaked or proliferated, but Google security researchers warned of an emerging market for “secondhand” exploits, which are sold to hackers motivated by money to extract more value out of the exploit. The discovery also shows how exploits and back doors designed to be used by governments can leak and ultimately be abused by cybercriminals or other non-state actors. Mobile security company iVerify obtained and reverse-engineered the hacking tools, saying in a blog post …

Jewish Heirs File Suite Regarding Met’s Ownership of Pissarro Canvas

Jewish Heirs File Suite Regarding Met’s Ownership of Pissarro Canvas

Published by José Betancourt

A painting by Camille Pissarro in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is under renewed scrutiny over the circumstances of its sale by its former owner, the department store magnate and art collector Max Julius Braunthal. As reported by the New York Times, seven of Braunthal’s heirs have filed suit in a French court, alleging that the painting, Haystacks, Morning, Eragny (1899), was sold under duress in 1941. The Met maintains that Braunthal received fair market value for the work, which depicts several domed haystacks in a verdant, tree-filled meadow in Eragny, the village northwest of Paris where Pissarro lived from 1884 until his death in 1903. Related Articles Braunthal’s heirs cite a 2023 French law stating that all art sales made by Jews during the Nazi occupation of France are to be considered null and void. Braunthal sold Haystacks, Morning, Eragny for 100,000 francs to Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery during that period. The law allows “stolen art, books, and other cultural property in France’s inalienable public domain—even work looted beyond its borders—to be …

A smarter, open-source office suite with an AI agent built in

A smarter, open-source office suite with an AI agent built in

Published by skeptic

There have been many fantastic alternative office suites to the big commercial options for decades now, but there are some features that are difficult for open-source projects to offer. Cloud-based services are an obvious one, but lately AI-powered features can be added to that list. That is, unless you choose ONLYOFFICE, which offers a solution to both. The latest updates to the ONLYOFFICE suite adds a slew of genuinely useful AI features, not only matching what commercial office suites do, but actually doing it better in many ways. And, thanks to ONLYOFFICE DocSpace, you can host your own cloud-based office service. What is ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors? OS Windows, macOS, & Linux Price model Free and Open Source ONLYOFFICE 9.2 brings the power of AI to open-source productivity software without the privacy headaches—and it’s an excellent replacement for paid office suites too! ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors are suite of downloadable productivity apps that you can install on your Windows, macOS, or Linux computer right now for the creation and editing of: Text documents Spreadsheets Presentations Fillable forms …