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Oct 19, 2021

Tesco opens new checkout-free store

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

Retail giant Amazon has pioneered the idea of automated shopping, as seen with its Amazon Go store format. The first of these launched in January 2018 in downtown Seattle and nearly 30 others have opened since. The concept is now catching on with other companies – including Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket and third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues. It has just launched its own automated store in central London.

The rollout of this technology at Tesco Express High Holborn follows a successful trial in Welwyn Garden City, a town north of London. The High Holborn branch has already been a cashless store since it first opened in 2018 and is now checkout-less too.

The newly developed system – called “GetGo” – offers the same products but with a faster and more convenient shopping experience. A customer simply downloads the mobile app, scans the QR code generated on their screen, picks up the groceries they need and then leaves the store.

Oct 19, 2021

Why the passage of Chinese, Russian navy ships is ringing alarm bells in Japan

Posted by in category: futurism

Chinese and Russian vessels have for the first time jointly traversed the Tsugaru Strait in between Honshu and Hokkaido islands.

Oct 19, 2021

SambaNova Systems releases enterprise-grade GPT AI-powered language model

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

SambaNova Systems, a company that builds advanced software, hardware, and services to run AI applications, announced the addition of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) language model to its Dataflow-as-a-Service™ offering. This will enable greater enterprise adoption of AI, allowing organizations to launch their customized language model in much less time — less than one month, compared to nine months or a year.

“Customers face many challenges with implementing large language models, including the complexity and cost,” said R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst of Constellation Research. “Leading companies seek to make AI more accessible by bringing unique large language model capabilities and automating out the need for expertise in ML models and infrastructure.”

Oct 19, 2021

Google Cloud invests $50 million in cybersecurity startup Cybereason

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI

Cybereason, a Tel Aviv-and Boston, Massachusetts-based cybersecurity company providing endpoint prevention, detection, and response, has secured a $50 million investment from Google Cloud, VentureBeat has learned. It extends the series F round that Cybereason announced in July from $275 million to $325 million, making Cybereason one of the best-funded startups in the cybersecurity industry with over $713 million in the capital.

We reached out to a Google Cloud spokesperson, but they didn’t respond by press time.

The infusion of cash comes after Cybereason and Google Cloud entered into a strategic partnership to bring to market a platform — Cybereason XDR, powered by Chronicle — that can ingest and analyze “petabyte-scale” telemetry from endpoints, networks, containers, apps, profiles, and cloud infrastructure. Combining technology from Cybereason, Google Cloud, and Chronicle, the platform scans more than 23 trillion security-related events per week and applies AI to help reveal, mitigate, and predict cyberattacks correlated across devices, users, apps, and cloud deployments.

Oct 19, 2021

General relativity’s time dilation was captured across a millimeter

Posted by in category: futurism

A record-breaking result reveals the precision achievable by atomic clocks, letting researchers detect slightly faster ticking over a tiny height change.

Oct 19, 2021

China Isn’t the AI Juggernaut the West Fears

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, surveillance

The nation excels in computer vision and facial recognition, but practical applications are limited to surveillance. The U.S. has much broader expertise.

Oct 19, 2021

Alibaba Just Unveiled One of China’s Most Advanced Chips

Posted by in categories: business, computing

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. unveiled a new server chip that’s based on advanced 5-nanometer technology, marking a milestone in China’s pursuit of semiconductor self-sufficiency.

The Chinese tech giant’s newest chip is based on micro-architecture provided by the SoftBank Group Corp.-owned Arm Ltd., according to a statement Tuesday. Alibaba, which is holding its annual cloud summit in Hangzhou, said the silicon will be put to use in its own data centers in the “near future” and will not be sold commercially, at least for now.

“Customizing our own server chips is consistent with our ongoing efforts toward boosting our computing capabilities with better performance and improved energy efficiency,” said Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and head of Alibaba’s research arm Damo Academy. “We plan to use the chips to support current and future businesses across the Alibaba Group ecosystem.”

Oct 19, 2021

Developing Artificial Intelligence That “Thinks” Like Humans

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Creating human-like AI is about more than mimicking human behavior — technology must also be able to process information, or ‘think’, like humans too if it is to be fully relied upon. New research, published in the journal Patterns and led by the University of Glasgow’s School of Psychology…


Magnetic solids can be demagnetized quickly with a short laser pulse, and there are already so-called HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) memories on the market that function according to this principle. However, the microscopic mechanisms of ultrafast demagnetization remain unclear. Now, a team at HZB has developed a new method at BESSY II to quantify one of these mechanisms and they have applied it to the rare-earth element Gadolinium, whose magnetic properties are caused by electrons on both the 4f and the 5d shells. This study completes a series of experiments done by the team on nickel and iron-nickel alloys. Understanding these mechanisms is useful for developing ultrafast data storage devices.

Oct 19, 2021

Ultrafast magnetism: Heating magnets, freezing time

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics

Magnetic solids can be demagnetized quickly with a short laser pulse, and there are already so-called HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) memories on the market that function according to this principle. However, the microscopic mechanisms of ultrafast demagnetization remain unclear. Now, a team at HZB has developed a new method at BESSY II to quantify one of these mechanisms and they have applied it to the rare-earth element Gadolinium, whose magnetic properties are caused by electrons on both the 4f and the 5d shells. This study completes a series of experiments done by the team on nickel and iron-nickel alloys. Understanding these mechanisms is useful for developing ultrafast data storage devices.

New materials should make information processing more efficient, for example, through ultrafast spintronic devices that store data with less energy input. But to date, the microscopic mechanisms of ultrafast demagnetization are not fully understood. Typically, the process of demagnetization is studied by sending an ultrashort laser pulse to the sample, thereby heating it up, and then analyzing how the system evolves in the first picoseconds afterward.

Oct 19, 2021

A Common Infection Could Be a Trigger For Multiple Sclerosis, Large Study Finds

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience

For most of the time since the first description of multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1,868 the causes of this disabling disease have remained uncertain. Genes have been identified as important, which is why having other family members with MS is associated with a greater risk of developing the disease.

A recent study my colleagues and I conducted found that several types of infection during the teenage years are associated with MS after age 20. Our study didn’t investigate whether people who are more likely to have genetic risks for MS were also more likely to have worse infections.

This might explain why people with MS also have more infections that need hospital treatment.