Lifeboat Foundation

Ever wonder why the most advanced robots always seem to have hard bodies? Why not more pliable ones, like humans have?

Researchers working on so-called “soft robotics” attempt to incorporate the feel of living organisms into their creations. But the field hasn’t taken off because the softer components haven’t been easy enough to mass-produce and incorporate into the designs—until now.

University of Virginia researchers have invented a manufacturing process for weaving soft materials such as fabrics, rubbers and gels so that they can be compatible with gadgets, which may lead to a soft robotics revolution.

Deep neural networks are generating much of the exciting progress stemming from generative AI. But their architecture relies on a configuration that is a virtual speedbump, ensuring the maximal efficiency can not be obtained.

Constructed with separate units for memory and processing, neural networks face heavy demands on system resources for communications between the two components that results in slower speeds and reduced efficiency.

IBM Research came up with a better idea by turning to the perfect model for its inspiration for a more efficient digital brain: the human brain.

India began exploring the Moon’s surface with a rover on Thursday, a day after it became the first nation to land a craft near the largely unexplored lunar south pole.

Pragyan— Wisdom in Sanskrit—rolled out of the lander hours after the latest milestone in India’s ambitious but cut-price space program sparked huge celebrations across the country.

“Rover ramped down the lander and India took a walk on the moon!” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday.

Computer chip maker Nvidia has rocketed into the constellation of Big Tech’s brightest stars while riding the artificial intelligence craze that’s fueling red-hot demand for its technology.

The latest evidence of Nvidia’s ascendance emerged with Wednesday’s release of the company’s quarterly earnings report. The results covering the May-July period exceeded Nvidia’s projections for astronomical sales growth propelled by the company’s specialized chips—key components that help power different forms of artificial intelligence, such as Open AI’s popular ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbots.

“This is a new computing platform, if you will, a new computing transition that is happening,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday during a conference call with analysts.

Lots of experts on AI say it can only be as good as the data it’s trained on — basically, it’s garbage in and garbage out.

So with that old computer science adage in mind, what the heck is happening with Google’s AI-driven Search Generative Experience (SGE)? Not only has it been caught spitting out completely false information, but in another blow to the platform, people have now discovered it’s been generating results that are downright evil.

Continue reading “Google’s Search AI Says Slavery Was Good, Actually” »

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland in your lower neck. It produces hormones that help regulate your metabolism, temperature and energy levels.

Thyroid cancer develops when cells within the thyroid mutate and grow abnormally. Thyroid cancer symptoms can be subtle early on and sometimes are blamed on an infection or a seasonal allergy. Thyroid cancer is highly treatable using a variety of methods.

A recent press release from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) has revealed that Tesla will be providing Virtual Power Plant (VPP) services to the state’s grid. The program is part of the Aggregate Distributed Energy Resource (ADER) project that the PUCT pushed last year.

With the VPP in place, Texas could now evaluate how consumer-owned small energy devices, such as home battery units, can be virtually aggregated to provide grid-scale services. Similar programs have been launched by Tesla in California and Australia, to much success.

As per the PUCT’s press release, the two ADERs that are launching the initiative involve Tesla Electric customers who have Powerwall batteries in their homes. The participants of the program have agreed to sell their surplus power in the ERCOT market, and will be compensated for doing so. One ADER is comprised of Houston-area CenterPoint Energy customers, while the other is comprised of Dallas-area customers served by Oncor Electric Delivery Company.

Fear of Russian escalation has paralyzed the West. What’s needed is forceful localized countermoves.

India has joined the U.S., China and the former USSR in successfully soft-landing a spacecraft on the surface of the moon. The uncrewed Chandrayaan-3 mission has also become the first to land close to the moon’s south pole.

About 15 minutes after initiating its Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS), Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) touched down around 8:34 a.m. EDT. Images were streamed live on YouTube from the Indian Space Research Agency (ISRO) control room in Bengaluru, India.

Continue reading “India Becomes Fourth Nation To Land On The Moon—And First To South Pole” »