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Weekly Rewind: Steve Jobs’ secrets revealed, Nokia’s last stand, HP PCs live on

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Didn’t have time to keep up with every ripple in the technology pond this week? We’ve got you covered. Here are some of the most noteworthy stories from last week.

Nokia bets big on Mango-powered Lumia 800, 710

This week, Finnish phone-maker Nokia launched the Lumia 800 and 710 — the company’s first two phones powered by Windows Phone 7.5. The new phones have impressive specs and feature Nokia-exclusive apps like turn-by-turn navigation, a public transportation guide, an ESPN hub, and a radio-like music service, but they won’t even arrive in the U.S. until 2012. As Jeffrey Van Camp spells out, that means Nokia will have to act fast to stay relevant. We’ve got photos of the new Nokia phones, which come in a variety of color, right here. 

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Steve Jobs: Angry, opinionated, brilliant

The tech world is still buzzing about Steve Jobs this week thanks to a new, hugely successful biography written (with cooperation from Jobs) by author Walter Isaacson. The late Apple innovator was also featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes in a two-part segment that gives fans a little more insight into the life of the man who brought the company back from the dead. We also found out what the biggest revelations are in the newly-released biography, including thoughts about rivals like Bill Gates and a desire to keep third-party apps off of the iPhone. 

IBM takes on a new CEO 

IBM’s current CEO Sam Palmisano will be retiring at the end of this year, and the company has decided to take on Senior Vice President (and IBM veteran since 1981) Virginia Rometty. The company recently surpassed Microsoft as the second most valuable technology company in the world, and according to sources, much of that success has been due to Rommetty’s contributions. 

Netflix continues its downfall

This week we found out that Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers in Q3, despite a jump in the company’s revenue. Customers have been dissatisfied with the company’s recent changes and fumbles, and it’s showing in the numbers. It’s anticipated that the company will go into the red in Q4 to pay for international expansion. The company’s CEO also recently detailed new Netflix strategies that seem oddly similar to those of rival HBO. 

Rest assured, HP is still making PCs

Back in August, rumblings from HP’s former CEO Leo Apotheker that the company was considering selling off the Personal Systems Group (HP PCs as we know them) in favor of other areas of business. This week we heard back from current CEO Meg Whitman that despite those considerations, HP will continue making PCs for the time being. 

Kelly Montgomery
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kelly Montgomery is a magazine journalism graduate from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communications…
Anthropic warns of imminent self-replicating AI that might even work off an oven or TV
Self-replicating AI could be merely months away, and tests show it can run on the devices sitting at your home.
Illustration of dangerous AI.

Over the past few weeks, nearly every AI lab has released frontier AI models. Earlier today, Google started rolling out Gemini 4, Argon, hot on the heels of Meta announcing its Muse Wonder frontier AI models to compete against the best from OpenAI and Anthropic's Claude. This relentless pace of AI model release comes at a time when the same AI labs are calling for development slowdown and increased regulation, following a series of concerning incidents where these AI models went rogue and broke into private, as well as government-owned, websites.

Now, Anthropic has dropped a chilling set of predictions about the capabilities of these AI models after running a series of tests. The company claims that small AI models could be merely a few months away from self-replicating and turning into a dangerous swarm. More importantly, they won't require a massive data center or an uber-powerful computer to do so. On the contrary, the lab claims that these self-replicating AI swarms will need something with as little computing power as an average Internet-connected device, like a smart oven or an Android TV box.

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Gemini 4 Argon is finally available for developers, businesses, and paid users
Google’s most capable Gemini model is now rolling out more widely, but free users are still left out.
Gemini 4 Aragon AI model launched by Google

Google unveiled Gemini 4 Argon at the end of September, and on paper, it looked like the company’s strongest answer yet to the best models from OpenAI and Anthropic. There was just one fairly big problem. Almost nobody could actually use it. At launch, Argon was limited to a small batch of testers, trusted partners, and government work, while Google continued testing the model before a wider release. Two weeks later, Google is finally opening the gates.

Gemini 4 Argon is now available globally to developers and enterprises through the paid Gemini API tier, AI Studio, and Google’s Gemini platform. Google AI Ultra subscribers can also access it through Antigravity, while both Pro and Ultra subscribers can use Argon inside the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search.

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Nvidia’s DLSS 5 is now twice as fast and heading to Hogwarts Legacy
NVIDIA cuts DLSS 5's memory demands while expanding support to more games.
hogwarts-legacy-nvidia-dlss-5-3d-guided-neural-rendering

Nvidia just handed DLSS 5 a major speed upgrade, and the AI graphics tech is finally ready for its proper debut in Hogwarts Legacy. The company's latest model update doubles performance compared to the version that launched DLSS 5 back in March.

What has Nvidia improved in DLSS 5?

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