Black Friday usually comes with a lot of hype and build-up despite its mildly depressing history. If you don’t take the right approach and prepare, you can make some rookie mistakes and end up being exploited by retailers rather than the other way around. Luckily, we already have an idea of what to expect this Black…
Source: LifeHacker – Everything You Should Do Now If You Shop on Black Friday
Imagine sitting down to a fine-dining meal in which droplets of sauce dynamically move basil leaves and other garnishes around the plate in preprogrammed patterns. Alternatively, you could choose to mix and match droplets to create your own flavor profile. That’s the long-term goal of the so-called “Dancing Delicacies” computational food project, which brings together scientists from Monash University’s Exertion Games Lab, Carnegie Mellon University’s Morphing Matter Lab, and Gaudi Labs in Switzerland to explore innovative new ways to turn meals into interactive performance art. Their latest invention is a 3D-printed plate that uses electrical voltage to manipulate liquid droplets, according to a paper published as part of the 2023 Designing Interactive Systems Conference.
“Cooking and eating is more than simply producing a dish and then facilitating energy intake,” co-author Floyd Mueller of Monash told Forbes. “It is about sharing, caring, crafting, slowing down and self-expression, and Dancing Delicacies aims to highlight these virtues at a time when they are often forgotten. The integration of food and computing will transform how we understand both computing and food as not two very different things, but a new frontier that combines the best of both.”
Chefs have been working with this kind of innovation for years via the molecular gastronomy and molecular mixology movements, creating a “Flor de Caco” dessert in which a cocoa bean expands like a flower when exposed to hot chocolate sauce, for instance. Then there was that cocktail (the “Disco Sour”) that changed color when blended with citrus, thanks to the incorporation of butterfly pea flower tea, which is a pH-sensitive ingredient. On the technology side, in 2014, MIT’s Media Matters Lab experimented with a shape-changing fork that inflated depending on how fast a person was eating. Another fork design was outfitted with electronics, in which an LED changed from red to green when users touched a food item with a conductive element, indicating how much water was in the food.
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Source: Ars Technica – This 3D-printed plate lets food droplets magically move without being touched
An anonymous reader shares a report: A brain-inspired computer chip that could supercharge artificial intelligence by working faster with much less power has been developed by researchers at IBM in San Jose, California. Their massive NorthPole processor chip eliminates the need to frequently access external memory, and so performs tasks such as image recognition faster than existing architectures do — while consuming vastly less power.
“Its energy efficiency is just mind-blowing,” says Damien Querlioz, a nanoelectronics researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay in Palaiseau. The work, published in Science, shows that computing and memory can be integrated on a large scale, he says. “I feel the paper will shake the common thinking in computer architecture.” NorthPole runs neural networks: multi-layered arrays of simple computational units programmed to recognize patterns in data. A bottom layer takes in data, such as the pixels in an image; each successive layer detects patterns of increasing complexity and passes information on to the next layer. The top layer produces an output that, for example, can express how likely an image is to contain a cat, a car or other object
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ‘Mind-Blowing’ IBM Chip Speeds Up AI
You can’t trust everything on a Wikipedia page, which is why it’s important that you refer to the original sources cited in the footnotes. But sometimes, even the primary sources can lead you astray. Researchers have developed an AI focused on improving the reliability of Wikipedia references by training the algorithms to identify citations on the website that are questionable.
The program, called SIDE, does two things: check if a primary source is accurate and suggest new ones. However, the AI operates under the assumption that a Wikipedia claim is true. This means that, while it can check for the validity of a source, it can’t actually verify claims made in an entry.
In a study, people preferred the AI’s suggested citations to the original 70 percent of the time. The researchers found that in nearly 50 percent of the cases, SIDE presented a source that was already being used by Wikipedia as the top reference. And 21 percent of the time, SIDE was one step ahead when it churned out a recommendation that was already deemed appropriate by human annotators in the study.
While the AI appears to demonstrate it can effectively help an editor verify Wikipedia claims, the researchers admit that alternative programs could outperform their current design in both quality and speed. SIDE is limited in its capabilities — namely, the program only considers references corresponding to web pages. In reality, Wikipedia cites books, scientific articles and info presented through other media beyond text like images and video. But beyond its technical limits, the whole premise of Wikipedia is that any writer anywhere could assign a reference to a topic. The researchers suggest that the use of Wikipedia itself could be limiting to the study. They allude that individuals who plug citations into the website could permeate bias depending on the nature of the topics in question.
Meanwhile, we all know that any program, especially an AI that is dependent on training, could be prone to the exposure of the biases of its programmer. The data used to train and evaluate SIDE’s models could be limited in that regard. But still, the benefits of using AI to streamline fact-checking, or at least use it as a supportive tool, could have reverberating applications elsewhere. Wikipedia and social media companies alike need to contend with bad actors and bots that flood digital town squares with false information. This is especially true and important now more than ever, in the wake of misinformation spreading around the Israel-Hamas war and the upcoming presidential elections in the US. The need to mitigate misinformation online could be catalyzed with AI tools, like SIDE, designed for this exact purpose. But there are still some advances that need to be made before it can.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/study-shows-ai-program-could-verify-wikipedia-citations-improving-reliability-184543711.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Study shows AI program could verify Wikipedia citations, improving reliability
Much like the previous two Spider-games, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is all about the suits. Whether you play more as Peter Parker or Miles Morales, the farther you get in the game, the more suits you can unlock. The suits can change the way the entire game looks and feels, and often allow you to live out your wildest…
Source: Gizmodo – Spider-Man 2’s Best Spider-Suits, Ranked
As the utility of AI systems has grown dramatically, so has their energy demand. Training new systems is extremely energy intensive, as it generally requires massive data sets and lots of processor time. Executing a trained system tends to be much less involved—smartphones can easily manage it in some cases. But, because you execute them so many times, that energy use also tends to add up.
Fortunately, there are lots of ideas on how to bring the latter energy use back down. IBM and Intel have experimented with processors designed to mimic the behavior of actual neurons. IBM has also tested executing neural network calculations in phase change memory to avoid making repeated trips to RAM.
Now, IBM is back with yet another approach, one that’s a bit of “none of the above.” The company’s new NorthPole processor has taken some of the ideas behind all of these approaches and merged them with a very stripped-down approach to running calculations to create a highly power-efficient chip that can efficiently execute inference-based neural networks. For things like image classification or audio transcription, the chip can be up to 35 times more efficient than relying on a GPU.
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Source: Ars Technica – IBM has made a new, highly efficient AI processor
AMD Threadripper Pro 7000WX and Threadripper 7000 Series Processors: Starting At $1,499 ($9,999 For 7995WX) Two new Threadripper product families arrives featuring AMD’s Zen 4 architecture, with up to 96 cores and 384MB of cache, the Threadripper Pro 7000WX and Threadripper 7000. More Cores More Cache Higher-Clocks Monstrous Performance…
Source: Hot Hardware – AMD Threadripper Pro 7000 Debut: 96-Core Zen 4 CPU Benchmarked
If you want to live in a newly constructed house, you have two choices: You can buy a finished home from a builder, or you can have one built from scratch. Either choice can be incredibly expensive: The cost of building a new house in the U.S. ranges quite a bit, with $332,397 being the national average, but the final…
Source: LifeHacker – These Are the Cheapest Houses You Can Build
Raptor Computing Systems as the company behind the open-source friendly, POWER-based Talos II server and Blackbird microATX desktop has continued leveraging POWER9 given the binary blobs and challenging state around POWER10. But looking ahead to next year it looks like they’ll be debuting some new hardware platforms…
Source: Phoronix – Raptor Computing Developing New Secure BMC & New OpenPOWER ISA 3.1 Based Systems
Persona 3 Reload, a full-fledged remake of Atlus Games’ beloved 2006 role-playing game Persona 3, is set to release on February 2, 2024, for Xbox, PlayStation, and Windows. So take a deep breath and relax, you’ve still got a bit of time to play through October’s busy fall releases before hunkering down for an…
Source: Kotaku – What Each Edition Of Persona 3 Reload Will Get You
Fleet is an open-source osquery manager that can be used to maintain secure workstations and servers and keep an accurate inventory of all your devices. In this tutorial, you will deploy Fleet Osquery Manager to an Ubuntu 22.04 server.
The post How to Install Fleet Osquery Manager on Rocky Linux 9 appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – How to Install Fleet Osquery Manager on Rocky Linux 9
Gaming analytics and esports brand company Gamesquare, which counts Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as one of its investors, is acquiring the struggling gaming influencer group Faze Clan. From a report: The all-stock deal is worth about $17 million, Bloomberg reports, a steep drop-off from Faze’s $725-million valuation at the time of its special purpose acquisition company, SPAC, merger in July of 2022. Since the SPAC made it publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange, Faze Clan, like much of the esports industry, has struggled, with the company posting a $28.4-million loss “through the first half of 2023,” according to Bloomberg. Last month, Faze Clan’s troubles reached an inflection point that led to the firing of CEO Lee Trink, who once compared the company to the rise of hip-hop during an interview on The Vergecast.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Faze Clan Acquired for Million, One Year After Its 5 Million SPAC
When it came to making the stars of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza come to life, Blumhouse and Universal brought out the big puppeteering guns from the Jim Henson Company.
Source: Gizmodo – How Five Nights at Freddy’s Its Creepy Animatronics To Life
Spider-Man 2, the highly anticipated sequel to Insomniac Games’ blockbuster 2018 action-adventure game, is out today, October 20. And though there’s plenty to be said about the impossibly fast fast-travel, the fantastic opening scene, and the story thus far, there’s one thing that I can’t get off my mind: Peter…
Source: Kotaku – Is Peter Parker More Buff In Spider-Man 2? A Kotaku Investigation
Samsung’s annual Memory Tech Day is taking place in San Jose this morning, and as part of the event, the company is making a couple of notable memory technology announcements/disclosures. The highlight of Samsung’s event is the introduction of Shinebolt, Samsung’s HBM3E memory that will set new marks for both memory bandwidth and memory capacity for high-end processors. The company is also disclosing a bit more on their GDDR7 memory, which will mark a significant technological update to the GDDR family of memory standards.
Source: AnandTech – Samsung Announces ‘Shinebolt’ HBM3E Memory: HBM Hits 36GB Stacks at 9.8 Gbps
I’m not a big Starbucks fan. Not because it’s a big corporation (or anything similarly noble), but because I live in Brooklyn, and without really trying, became something of a bougie coffee snob. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a candy-like, foamy PSL in the fall. Since I drink coffee at an alarming rate, I started…
Source: LifeHacker – Make a Better PSL With Pumpkin Butter
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is out, and that means we can talk about the game’s post-credits content and how the big PlayStation sequel seems to set up some very interesting, and very predictable, scenarios for future games and DLC. So uh, we’re gonna do it.
Source: Kotaku – Let’s Discuss Spider-Man 2’s Post-Credits Scenes
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Nathan Stirk )
“Verified” accounts on Elon Musk’s X platform spread nearly three-quarters of the 250 most viral posts containing commonly shared misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war, according to a study released yesterday by NewsGuard, a company that has worked with the European Commission on misinformation initiatives.
After buying Twitter nearly a year ago, Musk overhauled the system for doling out blue checkmarks so that anyone who pays $8 a month can be “verified.” Accounts verified as being notable and authentic under the pre-Musk system had their checkmarks removed.
“A NewsGuard analysis found that ‘verified’ accounts on X are superspreaders of misinformation about the conflict, boosting falsehoods while displaying a ‘verification’ blue checkmark that verifies nothing,” the report said.
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Source: Ars Technica – Top Israel/Hamas misinformation spreaders use Elon Musk’s paid “verification”
Thanksgiving dinner is not complete without stuffing (or dressing). It’s a humble, somewhat silly dish. You dry out some bread, make it wet again, then dry it out one more time, but the result is undeniably delicious—assuming the broth you used is, itself, delicious. For the best stuffing, you should focus on the…
Source: LifeHacker – For the Best Stuffing, Focus on the Stock
While being surrounded by clutter in your home can feel chaotic and overwhelming, much of it can probably simply be discarded. How much of your kid’s old artwork really needs to be kept forever? There’s nothing of value in that stack of junk mail. And what do all the cords in that drawer even do? I’m not saying it’s…
Source: LifeHacker – Use the ‘Calendar Method’ to Finally Declutter Your House
