Dec 1 (Reuters) — Amazon (AMZN.O) on Friday said it booked three Falcon 9 launches with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help deploy the ecommerce giant’s Project Kuiper satellite network, tapping a rival in the satellite internet business for its multi-billion dollar launch campaign.
Amazon aims to build Kuiper as a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to beam broadband internet globally and compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network, which already has some 5,000 satellites providing nearly global coverage.
Amazon, which vowed in 2019 to invest $10 billion into the project, will put an unspecified number of Kuiper satellites on three Falcon 9 rockets from SpaceX beginning in mid-2025, the company said Friday.
Researchers at the University of Sydney Nano Institute have invented a compact silicon semiconductor chip that integrates electronics with photonic, or light, components. The new technology significantly expands radio-frequency (RF) bandwidth and the ability to accurately control information flowing through the unit.
Expanded bandwidth means more information can flow through the chip and the inclusion of photonics allows for advanced filter controls, creating a versatile new semiconductor device.
Researchers expect the chip will have applications in advanced radar, satellite systems, wireless networks and the roll-out of 6G and 7G telecommunications and also open the door to advanced sovereign manufacturing. It could also assist in the creation of high-tech value-add factories at places like Western Sydney’s Aerotropolis precinct.
The network’s total capacity will surpass 500 Gbps by 2025.
While China is already marching ahead with its internet infrastructure, the country has announced the completion of its first high-orbit satellite communication network, which aims to provide fast and reliable internet service within its territory and to several countries along its Belt and Road initiative.
The network, which consists of three high-throughput satellites named ChinaSat 16, 19, and 26, is expected to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, a low-orbit satellite system developed by the American aerospace company, according to a Beijing-based communications expert.
500 Gbps speeds by 2025
According to the state news agencyXinhua, the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which owns the satellite operator, said the network would offer internet service for various sectors, such as aviation, navigation, emergency, and energy.
Chinese researchers report the successful quantum storage of entangled photons at telecom wavelengths within a crystal, in a breakthrough achievement that reportedly lasted 387 times longer than past similar experiments.
The research team, based at Nanjing University, says their findings could potentially “pave the way for realizing quantum networks based on solid-state devices.”
AI agents are what they ingest. Rather than scraping the internet, it would be better to confine their diets to books and encyclopedias, says Sorin Adam Matei.
Elon Musk is hyping the imminent release of his ChatGPT competitor Grok, yet another example of how his entire personality is just itself a biological LLM made by ingesting all of Reddit and 4chan. Grok already seems patterned in many ways off of the worst of Elon’s indulgences, with the sense of humor of a desperately unfunny and regressive internet troll, and biases informed by a man whose horrible, dangerous biases are fully invisible to himself.
There are all kinds of reasons to be wary of Grok, including the standard reasons to be wary of any current LLM-based AI technology, like hallucinations and inaccuracies. Layer on Elon Musk’s recent track record for disastrous social sensitivity and generally harmful approach to world-shaping issues, and we’re already looking at even more reason for concern. But the real risk probably isn’t yet so easy to grok, just because we have little understanding yet of the extent of the impact that widespread use of LLMs across our daily and online lives will have.
One key area where they’re already having and are bound to have much more of an impact is user-generated content. We’ve seen companies already deploying first-party integrations that start to embrace some of these uses, like Artifact with its AI-generated thumbnails for shared posts, and Meta adding chatbots to basically everything. Musk is debuting Grok on X as a feature reserved for Premium+ subscribers initially, with a rollout supposedly beginning this week.
Why it matters: While AI algorithms are seemingly everywhere, processing on the most popular platforms require powerful server GPUs to provide customers with their generative services. Arm is introducing a new dedicated chip design, set to provide AI acceleration even in the most affordable IoT devices starting next year.
The Arm Cortex-M52 is the smallest and most cost-efficient processor designed for AI acceleration applications, according to the company. This latest design from the UK-based fabless firm promises to deliver “enhanced” AI capabilities to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, as Arm states, without the need for a separate computing unit.
Paul Williamson, Arm’s SVP and general manager for the company’s IoT business, emphasized the need to bring machine learning optimized processing to “even the smallest and lowest-power” endpoint devices to fully realize the potential of AI in IoT. Despite AI’s ubiquity, Williamson noted, harnessing the “intelligence” from the vast amounts of data flowing through digital devices requires IoT appliances that are smarter and more capable.
DARPA: robots and technologies for the future management of advanced US research. DARPA military robots. DARPA battle robots. Military technologies DARPA. Battle robots of the future. Technologies of the future in the US Army.
0:00 Introduction. 01:03 DARPA mission. 01:30 Project ARPANET 02:09 First “smart machine” or robot. 03:05 The first self-driving vehicles and the first Boston Dynamics robot. 03:31 DARPA robot racing. 04:08 First Boston Dynamics Big Dog four-legged robot. 04:43 Energy Autonomous Tactical Robot Program. 05:00 Engineering Living Materials Program. 05:45 Spy Beetles — Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems. 06:03 Robot Worm — Project Underminer. 06:23 DARPA — The Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies. 06:57 Robotic pilots with artificial intelligence. 07:30 Artificial Intelligence Combat Air System — Air Combat Evolution. 08:14 UNcrewed Long Range Ships — Sea Train. 09:24 Project OFFSET 10:15 Project Squad X 10:47 Battle of human robots on DARPA Robotics Challenge.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, abbreviated DARPA, or the Office of Advanced Research Projects of the U.S. Department of Defense, was established in 1958, almost immediately after the launch of the USSR Sputnik-1. The realization that the Soviets were about to launch into space not only satellites, but also missiles, greatly cheered up the government of the United States. The result was the creation of a unique agency with a huge budget, which could be spent at its own discretion. Watch a selection of the most unexpected, strange and advanced projects in the field of technology and artificial intelligence DARPA in one video!
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958, in response to the USSR’s launch of Sputnik-1. DARPA’s mission is to create innovative defense technologies, and the agency’s projects have ranged from space-based missile shields to cyborg insects. Notably, DARPA has been involved in the creation of the internet, GPS, and Siri.
DARPA invests in projects to stimulate the development of technology and see where it leads. The agency’s first significant success was ARPANET, which laid the foundation for the modern internet. Moreover, DARPA’s computer vision, navigation, and planning techniques were fundamental to the development of robotics and web servers, video game development, and Mars rovers.
