US e-commerce giant Amazon’s investment could create up to 3,000 jobs, said the Elysee. US e-commerce giant Amazon will invest more than 1.2 billion euros in France, creating more than 3,000 jobs, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said on Sunday. The money will help develop Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud infrastructure, mainly generative artificial intelligence, […]
Technology
AI film festival gives glimpse of cinema’s future
Credit: AI-generated image With fantastical characters including mud people and giant grandmothers, an AI film festival is giving a glimpse of the storytelling made possible by the novel technology. Nearly 3,000 short films were submitted to the festival organized by Runway AI, one of the leading start-ups in the field of AI-powered video generation. The […]
Boeing’s problems rattle US aviation regulator as well
This Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane of Alaska Airlines lost a side panel during a flight on January 5, 2024. The US Federal Aviation Administration, sharply criticized after the crashes of two Boeing planes in 2018 and 2019, is again being dragged into a maelstrom surrounding the major American aerospace manufacturer. The dramatic mid-flight blowout […]
Unionized US Apple store votes to authorize strike
Credit: Armand Valendez from Pexels Unionized workers at a Maryland Apple store voted on Saturday to authorize a strike, which would mark the first such labor action against the retailer in the United States if it goes forward. Employees at the Apple store in the town of Towson, outside of Baltimore, voted to unionize in […]
Red, yellow, green … and white? Smarter vehicles could mean big changes for the traffic light
This undated photo provided by the University of Michigan College of Engineering shows vehicles as they drive through the Old Woodward Avenue and East Maple signalized intersection, which was retimed using the Optimized Signal as a Service (OSaaS), in Birmingham, Mich. Smarter vehicles could mean some of the most dramatic changes for the traditional traffic […]
French art group uses brainwaves and AI to recreate landscapes
The trio already gained attention in 2018 by selling an AI-generated artwork for more than 400,000 euros. The hypercolour image of a dark hill and lava flow is pretty enough—but its high-tech artificial intelligence origins make it special. It is the product of the brainwaves of one member of French art collective Obvious, collected in […]
Musk says Tesla charger network will grow, days after layoffs
A Tesla Supercharger station in Petaluma, California. Tesla boss Elon Musk said Friday the electric vehicle manufacturer would invest over $500 million this year to install new superchargers, just days after a report of massive layoffs in this branch of the company. “Just to reiterate: Tesla will spend well over $500M expanding our Supercharger network […]
Blockchain could offer a solution to the UK’s transport ticketing systems
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A new approach to transport ticketing offers a step towards an integrated, transparent system that works efficiently for both ticket providers and passengers across all modes of transport. Traditional ticketing systems are based on solutions that are vulnerable to issues, including a lack of transferability across multi-modal transport networks and an […]
Biden’s clean energy tax credits likely to remain ‘law of the land’: Brainard
White House national economic advisor Lael Brainard said the IRA clean energy tax credits were now the law of the land. Most of Joe Biden’s clean energy tax credits are now law and are unlikely to be reversed by Donald Trump if he wins November’s presidential election, a senior administration official said Friday. The 2022 […]
Scientists convert chicken fat into energy storage devices
Graphical abstract. Credit: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c02753 The global move toward more sustainable, green energy has increased power reserves and the demand for energy storage devices. Unfortunately, some materials for these devices can be expensive and environmentally problematic. Producing alternative energy storage devices from things that are usually thrown away could […]
Amazon’s new fees on sellers likened to ‘kick in the gut’
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Amazon.com Inc. merchants have found themselves caught in an economic vice. Earlier this year, the e-commerce giant rolled out changes to the fees its charges them—essentially shifting more of its operating costs onto the small businesses that account for most of the products sold on the site. Making matters worse for […]
A new approach to using neural networks for low-power digital pre-distortion in mmWave systems
Overview of the proposed architecture for digital pre-distortion (DPD), connected in between the baseband layer (BB) and the analog front-end (AFE). The top part operates continuously during transmission, whereas the bottom part is only involved in updating the calibration coefficients. Credit: Ludovico Minati / Tokyo Tech In a study published in the journal IEICE Electronics […]
Catching additive manufacturing defects with nanoseconds to spare
Additive manufacturing has significant potential to strengthen the United States’ manufacturing base, but defects within additively manufactured parts are preventing widespread adoption. Johns Hopkins APL experts are addressing this issue by developing sensors capable of identifying and preventing these defects before they occur. Credit: Johns Hopkins APL The United States is on the cusp of […]
The end of the package holiday provider? Blockchain technology could revolutionize travel experiences
Credit: Tourism Management (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2023.104871 Forget the middleman—blockchain technology could lead to the end of the traditional package holiday provider, putting power back into the hands of customers, according to a new study from the University of Surrey. The research looked into user acceptance of blockchain-based sharing platforms similar to Airbnb. The study found […]
Global analysis of 30M hydrogen energy tweets shows increase from 2015 Paris Agreement
Credit: Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s13278-023-01194-6 Australia’s hydrogen energy-related discussion on Twitter (now X) is now ranked seventh globally, according to an analysis of 30.7 million tweets conducted by QUT researchers. The multi-lingual study’s first author Ph.D. researcher Deepak Uniyal, who conducted the study with Professor Richi Nayak from the School of […]
Making batteries takes lots of lithium: Almost half of it could come from Pennsylvania wastewater
Map of study area showing the Marcellus shale extent, well locations using in decline curve analysis (DCA), PW samples used in this study, and previous USGS sample locations. Credit: Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-58887-x Most batteries used in technology like smartwatches and electric cars are made with lithium that travels across the world before even […]
Environmentalists battle to get Peco to increase its use of green energy, but the oil industry calls it a job killer
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The nation is in the middle of a contentious transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It’s a change either hailed by environmentalists for addressing climate change and public health or loathed by the oil and gas industry for killing jobs and being less reliable, efficient and affordable. And what the […]
Cyberattack cripples major US health care network
Ascension, a major U.S. health care system with 140 hospitals in 19 states, announced late Thursday that a cyberattack has caused disruptions at some of its hospitals. “Systems that are currently unavailable include our electronic health records system, MyChart (which enables patients to view their medical records and communicate with their providers), some phone systems, […]
AI systems are already skilled at deceiving and manipulating humans, study shows
Example of premeditated deception from Meta’s CICERO in the game Diplomacy. Credit: Patterns/Park Goldstein et al. Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems have already learned how to deceive humans, even systems that have been trained to be helpful and honest. In a review article published in the journal Patterns on May 10, researchers describe the risks […]
Sky-high vanity: Constructing the world’s tallest buildings creates high emissions, researchers say
World’s tallest vanity heights in skyscrapers as of May 2024. Credit: Adapted from Helal et al. (2024), using data from the CTBUH Skyscraper Center, CC BY Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies—from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today the […]
Wearable devices can now harvest neural data—urgent privacy reforms needed
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Recent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with or without the help of artificial intelligence (AI). There’s also a newer product category that engages directly with the brain. It’s […]
Researchers test AI systems’ ability to solve the New York Times’ connections puzzle
Average success rate across all puzzles and seeds for baseline models and LLMs, broken down by puzzle category (note that CoT indicates the use of chain-of-thought prompting). Categories increase in difficulty going from yellow to green to blue to purple. Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2404.11730 Can artificial intelligence (AI) match human skills for finding obscure […]
Honda posts record profit, issues cautious forecasts
Honda has made big outlays as it aggressively pursues an ambitious target of acheiving 100 percent electric vehicle sales. Japanese auto giant Honda on Friday logged a record annual profit thanks to improving global vehicle sales, but issued a cautious outlook for the current fiscal year. The company said net profit for the year to […]
Chip giant TSMC’s April revenue jumps 60% on-year
TSMC is one of the world’s leading semiconductor companies. Taiwanese chip giant TSMC said on Friday that April revenue jumped nearly 60 percent on-year, riding a huge wave of demand for the advanced semiconductors used in AI hardware. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company controls more than half the world’s output of chips, and supplies them for […]
Apple apologizes for iPad ‘Crush’ ad after backlash
Apple said it won’t air the iPad ‘Crush’ ad on television as planned. Apple apologized on Thursday after an ad for its latest-edition iPad caused an uproar for showing an industrial press crushing objects linked to human creativity, infuriating artists. Social media users immediately criticized the ad, which was posted on X by Apple CEO […]