The Federal Communications Commission has updated its definition of what constitutes high-speed broadband, increasing it fourfold to download speeds of 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 20 megabits per second from the 2015 benchmarks of 25/3 Mbps. The change is based on speeds available from Internet service providers, consumer usage patterns and federal and state programs, the FCC says. In a report assessing whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed “in a reasonable and timely fashion” across the U.S., the FCC concludes it is not, and that gaps in deployment are not closing rapidly enough. Read more

Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has completed a software upgrade that aims to make its network cheaper. Called Dencun, the update lowers the cost of so-called layer-2 networks — which include chains like Base, Polygon and Arbitrum — to about a cent for transactions that previously cost $1, while exchanges that used to cost a few cents are reduced to fractions of a cent. Accomplished through a new system of storing data, the upgrade is being welcomed as a harbinger of a development renaissance brimming with new applications and free services. Read more

Robotics firm Figure AI is getting a lot of attention for its humanoid robot, Figure 01, which the company unveiled along with news that it has raised $675 million, for a $2.6 billion valuation, from investors including OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Pronounced “Figure One,” the general purpose robot looks and moves like a human, and can perform mundane tasks like serving food as well as undesirable jobs like picking up trash. It “sees” using “onboard cameras that feed into a large vision-language model (VLM) trained by OpenAI,” according to Figure co-founder and CEO Brett Adcock. Read more

The European Union has passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, becoming the first global entity to pass comprehensive law to regulate AI’s development and use. Member states agreed on the framework in December 2023, and it was adopted Wednesday by the European Parliament with 523 votes in favor, 46 against and 49 abstentions. The legislation establishes what are being called “sweeping rules” for those building AI as well as those who deploy it. The rules, which will take effect gradually, implement new risk assessments, ban AI uses deemed “high risk,” and mandate transparency requirements. Read more

Artificial intelligence imaging service Midjourney has been embraced by storytellers who have also been clamoring for a feature that enables characters to regenerate consistently across new requests. Now Midjourney is delivering that functionality with the addition of the new “–cref” tag (short for Character Reference), available for those who are using Midjourney v6 on the Discord server. Users can achieve the effect by adding the tag to the end of text prompts, followed by a URL that contains the master image subsequent generations should match. Midjourney will then attempt to repeat the particulars of a character’s face, body and clothing characteristics. Read more