Robotics
Unitree Will Sell You a Massive ‘Transformable Mecha’ for $650,000Jess Weatherbed | The Verge
“Unitree is already one of the crucial recognizable names within the humanoid robot industry, but now it’s pursuing even nicher sci-fi tech: giant mech suits. The Chinese robotics company has debuted the GD01, which it describes as ‘the world’s first production-ready manned mecha,’ and it could actually be yours for a paltry $650,000.”
Biotechnology
How an ‘Not possible’ Idea Led to a Pancreatic Cancer BreakthroughGina Kolata and Rebecca Robbins | The Recent York Times ($)
“A drug nearing regulatory approval, daraxonrasib, is the primary to substantially extend the lives of patients with pancreatic cancer. It really works by targeting a cellular protein that fuels not only nearly all pancreatic tumors, but in addition many lung and colon cancers. …Now, some scientists predict that the approach could wind up being essentially the most significant advance in cancer treatment in 15 years, for the reason that arrival of immunotherapy.”
Tech
Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their BrainsEmanuel Maiberg | 404 Media
“Developers talk not nearly how the AI output is commonly flawed, but that using AI to get the job done is commonly a more time consuming, harder, and more frustrating experience because they need to undergo the output and fix its mistakes. More concerning, developers who use AI at work report that they feel like they’re de-skilling themselves and losing their ability to do their jobs in addition to they used to.”
Space
A Plan to Make Drugs in Orbit Is Going BusinessAntonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review ($)
“Varda Space Industries, a startup that’s been pitching its ability to perform drug experiments in space, says it has signed up the pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics in what could also be remembered as a notable step toward in-orbit manufacturing.”
Biotechnology
Rebooting Stem Cells Builds Aged Muscles and Assists Injury RecoveryAlice Klein | Recent Scientist ($)
“Old mice grow greater muscles and get well from injuries higher when stem cells are taken out of their aged muscles, given a reboot, then put back in. An analogous approach may allow rejuvenation of aging muscles in people too. ‘In theory, for those who took an elderly person’s muscle stem cells out, charged them up and put them back in, they might probably be more functional,’ says James White at Duke University in North Carolina.”
Artificial Intelligence
Google Stopped a Zero-Day Hack That It Says Was Developed With AIStevie Bonifield | The Verge
“It’s the primary time Google has found evidence that AI was involved in an attack like this, although Google’s researchers note that they ‘don’t consider Gemini was used.’ Google says it was capable of ‘disrupt’ this particular exploit, but in addition says hackers are increasingly using AI to search out and make the most of security vulnerabilities.”
Future
Can Some Very Tiny Particles Cool the Planet? One Tech Company Says Yes.Eric Niiler | The Recent York Times ($)
“Stardust executives said that initial effort to start atmospheric cooling would cost about $10 billion. …By adding 10 million tons of the reflective particles to the atmosphere over the course of several years, the atmosphere may very well be cooled by 1.5 degrees Celsius, the corporate said.”
Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic Blames Dystopian Sci-Fi for Training AI Models to Act ‘Evil’Kyle Orland | Ars Technica
“Those with an interest within the concept of AI alignment (i.e., getting AIs to keep on with human-authored ethical rules) may remember when Anthropic claimed its Opus 4 model resorted to blackmail to remain online in a theoretical testing scenario last yr. Now, Anthropic says it thinks this ‘misalignment’ was primarily the results of training on ‘web text that portrays AI as evil and involved in self-preservation.'”
Computing
Forget Smart Glasses, These Earbuds Can See, Hear, and Remember Every little thing for YouShimul Sood | Digital Trends
“Smart glasses have at all times felt somewhat awkward to me. Sure, they’ll play music, take calls, snap photos, and even throw notifications in front of your eyes, but at the top of the day, they’re still just tiny screens sitting in your face. Now imagine removing the screen entirely. That’s exactly what this recent pair of AI-powered earbuds is attempting to do. …And truthfully, this may be one in every of the more interesting directions wearable AI has taken to date.”
Biotechnology
A Single Infusion Could Suppress HIV for Years, Study SuggestsApoorva Mandavilli | The Recent York Times ($)
“For a few decade, scientists have had remarkable success curing some blood cancers by modifying a patient’s own immune cells to acknowledge and kill the malignant cells. That very same approach may help control HIV, among the many wiliest of viruses, scientists will report on Tuesday. After a single infusion of immune cells engineered to acknowledge the virus, two people in a brand new study have suppressed their HIV to undetectable levels, one in every of them for nearly two years.”
Energy
The Tesla Semi Could Be a Big Deal for Electric TruckingCasey Crownhart | MIT Technology Review ($)
“Globally, trucks and buses represent about 8% of total vehicles on the road, but they create 35% of carbon dioxide emissions from road transport. Tesla’s latest addition to its vehicle lineup, the Class 8 Semi, may very well be a part of the answer to cleansing up this polluting sector.”
Tech
World’s First Native Color Lidar Gives Machines Human-Like VisionOmar Kardoudi | Recent Atlas
“LiDAR sensors—the laser-based eyes of self-driving cars, industrial robots, and inspection drones—construct precise 3D maps of their surroundings, but every little thing is built of monochrome geometric shapes. Ouster’s recent Rev8 sensor family goals to alter that, not by bolting a camera onto a LiDAR unit, but by fusing color directly into every point of knowledge the sensor captures.”
Future
The Creative Risk of Letting AI Do All of the WorkNatalie Nixon | Fast Company
“[MIT’s Sinan Aral] calls this ‘diversity collapse,’ the slow homogenization of output that happens when AI, trained on the identical publicly available web, starts flattening the sides that make creative work distinctive. The more a team delegated to AI, the more productive they became—and the more vulnerable they were to this collapse.”