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At CES 2023, the CEO of Moderna discussed mRNA technology.

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to be a terrible plight on the world. But if there’s any silver lining in what has happened, the deadly worldwide plague has brought about advancements in medicine created to fight it that may have transformational impacts well past the pandemic.

In a conversation during CES 2023, one of the world’s eminent tech gatherings, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel discussed the potential to utilize mRNA technology at the basis of groundbreaking Covid vaccines, developed with unprecedented speed, to create personalized cancer treatments.

Continue reading “The mRNA vaccine technology may hold the key to developing personalized cancer treatments” | >

Will 2023 shrink their fortunes further?

The world’s top tech billionaires have lost a combined $575 billion of their personal fortunes as the stock price of the companies they have founded have dropped significantly in 2022, Business Insider.

Even as millions in the U.S. lost their jobs, already rich tech billionaires added a combined $2.

1, 2

Continue reading “Musk, Bezos and other tech billionaires lost over 0 billion of wealth in 2022” | >

They can be your power source on the go.

A startup named LAND Energy offers its customers something that most companies don’t. The option to swap the batteries on the vehicle, keeping the vehicle brand new even as technology improves over the years.

Unlike gas-powered vehicles, where the engine is the core of the machine, the battery pack on an electric vehicle (EV) is where the most advanced technology lies. With the EV industry still in its infancy, we can surely expect technology to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years, and that means that the vehicle you buy now could likely be obsolete.

Continue reading “Ohio-based startup’s e-bikes come with swappable batteries” | >

As we enter 2023, these were the big stories in self-driving cars for 2022. You an also check out my summary of early 2022 for more details on that quarter, but these are the game-changers for this year. There’s no doubt this was a year of huge ups and downs. A year where some gave up and others doubled down. A year where the stock market and VC funding took a massive nosedive and companies mostly shrunk, but also a year of great technical progress.

Usually I do this as a countdown to the biggest story, but I’ll spoil it right now and say the big story was the incredible contrast of the good and bad news. So I’m instead going to tell you the good, the bad and the not particularly ugly.

We wrap up the year with the biggest stories in robocars, from the very bad to the very good, of which 2022 had lots of both. Includes video of the stories.

Read more | >

Meta, Canva, and Shopify among other companies are already using the technology that undergirds ChatGPT in their customer service chatbots, but experts warn that companies should be wary of generative AI’s creativity and unpredictability.

From processing an order return at Shopify to resetting a password for a Canva account, chances are that the chatbot you’ve interacted with uses the same type of large language models that power ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral generative AI chatbot.

Now Ada, the Toronto-based company that automates 4.5 billion customer service interactions, has partnered with OpenAI to use GPT-3.

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Across much of the country, the holidays were ushered in with strong winter storms, with every region of the country impacted by extreme weather from Christmas into the new year. The West Coast has experienced the most recent extreme weather with its third atmospheric river event in just three weeks bringing record rainfall and winds along the California coast. Buffalo, NY, is still digging out from its record holiday snowstorm and much of the Northern Plains saw record snowfalls just last week. The southern states weren’t spared from extreme winter weather with Florida and other parts of the southeast experiencing record cold temperatures over Christmas. While these weather events are all quite different — from heavy snows to rain to extreme cold — the one thing they have in common is the challenge it brings to the 1,400 utility companies across the country.

Extreme weather events are increasing, and utilities and customers alike are feeling the impact. According to Climate Central, the United States has experienced a 67% increase in major power outages from weather-related events since 2000, a trend predicted to continue as extreme weather events increase in frequency. With these most recent weather events across the country, on Christmas Eve alone, over 1.6 million U.S. customers were without power. The troubles continue now in California with nearly 196,000 Californians without power last week and more storms over the Pacific ready to move in bringing similar conditions.

Large utilities have been effectively using predictive weather analytics to prepare and pre-stage crews to help manage restoration efforts during major weather events like we just saw. But the majority of small to mid-size utilities still rely on traditional forecasts, severe weather updates and immediate impact assessments to make decisions around operations, safety and resource allocation. Recent advancements in technology, data modeling and cloud computing are making enterprise technology, such as machine learning for weather risks, more accessible to utilities of all sizes.

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You might be rolling your eyes as you see the drone take off to the skies and hover over the Australian coastline, camera angled straight down towards the glistening turquoise water. “Another TikTok influencer trying to get the perfect shot,” you grumble to yourself. But if you look closely at the pilot, you’ll notice they’ve got a sign next to them that says “Keep Clear” in bright yellow and red letters. This is no TikTok influencer.

It’s an Australian surf lifesaver, using the above drone to spot sharks at the beach before they get too close to swimmers like yourself.

Australian surf lifesavers are increasingly using drones to spot sharks at the beach before they get too close for comfort. Can AI help them with identifying dangerous species?

Continue reading “Can Drones And Artificial Intelligence Keep Us Safe From Sharks?” | >

In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known as a data processing unit (DPU), for around $190 million. Today, Microsoft confirmed the acquisition but not the purchase price, saying that it plans to use Fungible’s tech and team to deliver “multiple DPU solutions, network innovation and hardware systems advancements.”

“Fungible’s technologies help enable high-performance, scalable, disaggregated, scaled-out data center infrastructure with reliability and security,” Girish Bablani, the CVP of Microsoft’s Azure Core division, wrote in a blog post. “Today’s announcement further signals Microsoft’s commitment to long-term differentiated investments in our data center infrastructure, which enhances our broad range of technologies and offerings including offloading, improving latency, increasing data center server density, optimizing energy efficiency and reducing costs.”

A DPU is a dedicated piece of hardware designed to handle certain data processing tasks, including security and network routing for data traffic. The approach is intended to help reduce the load on CPUs and GPUs for core computing tasks related to a given workload.

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Apple Maps launched a new parking feature that provides users with parking options and availability near a specific destination. In partnership with the digital parking reservation platform, SpotHero, Apple Maps users across the U.S. and Canada can now get parking information for over 8,000 locations.

To use the new feature, launched late last week, iPhone and Mac users can search for a destination in the Apple Maps app and then select “More” and “Parking.” They’re then directed to the SpotHero website without leaving Apple Maps. Users can search for nearby parking and reserve a space using SpotHero’s secure payment options, the parking platform claims.

SpotHero also allows users to filter their search by date and time as well as parking spots with EV charging, wheelchair accessibility, valet services and more.

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