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Western Digital begins production of the first 64-layers 3D NAND memory chip in the world. (Photo : SanDisk / YouTube)

Western Digital has announced on Monday, Feb. 6, that it has started its production of the densest 3D NAND flash memory chips in the industry. The new Western Digital 3D NAND chips enable three bits of data to be stored in each cell and stack 64 layers atop another.

According to Computerworld, the 3D NAND flash chips are based on 3D technology or vertical stacking. This technology is called Bit Cost Scaling (BiCS) by Western Digital (WD) and its partner Toshiba. The pilot production of the first 64-layer 3D NAND flash 512 GB memory chip has been already launched by WD.

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In the self-driving future envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, car owners might be saying “goodbye” to a whole lot more than steering wheels.

Musk is so sure of the safety features bundled into Tesla vehicles that his company has begun offering some customers a lifetime insurance and maintenance package at the time of purchase.

No more monthly insurance bills. No more unexpected repair costs.

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Like all great programmers I get most of my code from StackOverflow questions. Can’t figure out how to add authentication to Flask? Easy. Want to shut down sendmail? Boom. Now, thanks to all the code on the Internet, a robot can be as smart as a $180,000 coder.

The system, called DeepCoder, basically searches a corpus of code to build a project that works to spec. It’s been used to complete programming competitions and could be pointed at a larger set of data to build more complex products.

From the paper:

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In Brief In a new report, scientists detail that have have observed how cancer cells spread from the initial tumor to the bloodstream. This development could allow us to better understand cancer and, thus, how to fight it.

In what could be a major step forward in our understanding of how cancer moves around the body, researchers have observed the spread of cancer cells from the initial tumour to the bloodstream.

The findings suggest that secondary growths called metastases ‘punch’ their way through the walls of small blood vessels by targeting a molecule known as Death Receptor 6 (no, really, that’s what it’s called). This then sets off a self-destruct process in the blood vessels, allowing the cancer to spread.

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Uber Technologies’ Gary Marcus said he is stepping down from his post as head of AI Labs, four months after the unit was created.

Gary Marcus, head of the recently launched AI Labs, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he is stepping down and will serve as a special advisor to AI Labs.

The ride-hailing app created AI Labs last year and also acquired Geometric Intelligence to form the initial AI Labs team.

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Goldcorp (NYSE: GG, TSX: G) is teaming up with one of the world’s largest computer companies to help it find more gold at its storied Red Lake mine in Ontario.

Vancouver-based Goldcorp announced on March 3 it is bringing IBM Watson technology to Canadian mining for the first time. Named after IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, Watson is a supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence with analytical software. According to WhatIs, IBM Watson replicates the human ability to answer questions by accessing 90 servers with a combines data storage of 200 million pages of information. Yet it can squeeze into a space that would fit 10 refrigerators. The supercomputer memorized the “urban dictionary” in 2013.

While the High Grade Zone (HGZ) has been the backbone of the Red Lake operation, with an average gold grade over two ounces per tonne, HGZ is expected to be depleted by 2020. Thus the need for more exploration to keep the mine going.

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The Google-owned star British artificial intelligence company DeepMind is in talks with the National Grid about a potential partnership, with the possibility of using the technology to make the supply of energy across the UK more efficient.

“There’s huge potential for predictive machine learning technology to help energy systems reduce their environmental impact,” said a spokesperson for the company.

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