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via https://ift.tt/74XTRzq Photonic computing startup Lightmatter is taking its big shot at the rapidly growing AI computation market with a hardware-software combo it claims will help the industry level up — and save a lot of electricity to boot. Lightmatter’s chips basically use optical flow to solve computational processes like matrix vector products. This math is at the heart of a lot of AI work and currently performed by GPUs and TPUs that specialize in it but use traditional silicon gates and transistors. The issue with those is that we’re approaching the limits of density and therefore speed for a given wattage or size. Advances are still being made but at great cost and pushing the edges of classical physics. The supercomputers that make training models like GPT-4 possible are enormous, consume huge amounts of power and produce a lot of waste heat. “The biggest companies in the world are hitting an energy power wall and experiencing massive challenges with AI scalability....

via https://ift.tt/Sg0t9mE By the time Howard Rheingold’s “Virtual Reality” was published in 1991, the Sensorama was already a “slowly deteriorating” relic stashed away in a cabana next the pool at its inventor’s West Los Angeles home. Rheingold describes awe — even surprise — that the system was still operable almost 30 years after its introduction. “I was transported to the driver’s seat of a motorcycle in Brooklyn in the 1950s,” the author writes. “I heard the engine start. I felt a growing vibration through the handlebar, and the 3D photo that filled much of my field of view came alive, animating into a yellow, scratchy, but still effective 3D motion picture.” The experience is immediately identifiable to anyone who has spent time in a modern VR headset. In the early 90s, it no doubt felt “a bit like looking up the Wright Brothers and taking their original prototype out for a spin,” as the book describes. At the dawn of the decade that gave us both “The Real World” and “The End ...

via https://ift.tt/zSqFeKX Look. We’re all interested in one. I know it, you know it, Apple certainly knows it. Much as AI was Google’s primary focus at I/O and…I don’t know — Windows 11, I guess — was Microsoft’s centerpiece at Build , we’re all going into and leaving WWDC 2023 with one thing in mind: XR. The company’s annual developer conference kicks off with a keynote next Monday, June 5 at 10AM PT . Apple loves to effectively cram half a year’s worth of news into those two or so hours, leaving the rest of the week (up to and including June 9) for developer-focused sessions. There’s also a “State of the Union” for platforms starting 1:30PM on the 5 th , but that’s more overview, less news. Who’s Going to WWDC? We made a fun little community site! See who is coming, explore your route, and make new friends. Add your route here: https://t.co/n1sxxda1KW — Flighty App (@FlightyApp) May 30, 2023 Like last year, the event will feature limited in-person attendance (includin...

via https://ift.tt/AKBHsuG Productivity-enhancing app Portal has launched a Mac app . The company helps users regain focus and become more productive with immersive backgrounds and natural sounds. The service has been available through an iOS app since 2019 — the desktop and mobile apps have similar objectives. The company said that the app has attracted more than a million downloads. With the native Mac app, which is compatible with Apple silicon, developers aim to cater to professionals working from both their home and an office. Portal for Mac has more than 80 environments to choose from, which include high-quality looping videos captured by the company’s own team. The startup said that it has used 12K cameras to record some of the most scenic and peaceful surroundings in the world. Image Credits: Portal.app You can choose to have looping videos on the desktop or turn off motion. In that case, you get a more traditional still background image. Additionally, you can turn off...

via https://ift.tt/O2elvG0 There are nearly 186,000 dentist businesses in the U.S., and at any given time, they are replenishing supplies. The process of doing so was traditionally fragmented, with offices relying on between three and seven suppliers, on average. This means someone sits at the computer with tabs open to vendor websites, going back and forth between them, to compare prices and find the best deal. Adding to the issue in recent years was the global pandemic which strained the supply chain and made finding everyday items, like gloves and masks, more difficult. Caen Contee, founder of global micromobility startup Lime, told TechCrunch that this is an avoidable problem. He teamed up with software engineer Ivan Bertona to develop Wellplaece , an automated, multi-vendor supply product purchasing platform for dental offices. “Think of the technology like an extraction layer on top of procurement for dental practices,” Bertona said in an interview. “Around optimization, we ...

via https://ift.tt/LV2mzr1 After shutting down its food delivery business last year , Amazon India is now experimenting with dine-in payments. The company has initiated a limited introduction of bill payments at restaurants using Amazon Pay. The facility is currently active in select areas of Bengaluru with a limited set of restaurants. Users can head to Amazon Pay > Dining in the Amazon app to make payments using credit/debit cards, net banking, UPI, or Amazon Pay Later. At the moment, Amazon India is offering discounts on bill payments at almost all listed restaurants. Image Credits: Amazon It’s not clear if the e-commerce group is testing this in any other city. Amazon India spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment. Image Credits: Amazon Food delivery bigwigs Zomato and Swiggy both offer in-restaurant payments and discounts as they attempt to attract more customers. Earlier this month, Zomato launched its own UPI service in partnership with the ICICI ba...

via https://ift.tt/mWGwgrY A cybersecurity firm says a popular Android screen recording app that racked up tens of thousands of downloads on Google’s app store subsequently began spying on its users, including by stealing microphone recordings and other documents from the user’s phone. Research by ESET found that the Android app, “iRecorder — Screen Recorder,” introduced the malicious code as an app update almost a year after it was first listed on Google Play. The code, according to ESET, allowed the app to stealthily upload a minute of ambient audio from the device’s microphone every 15 minutes, as well as exfiltrate documents, web pages and media files from the user’s phone. The app is no longer listed in Google Play. If you have installed the app, you should delete it from your device. By the time the malicious app was pulled from the app store, it had racked up more than 50,000 downloads. ESET is calling the malicious code AhRat, a customized version of an open-source remote ...

via https://ift.tt/XhEDluF Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Happy Memorial Day everyone. In this issue: Astranis’ novel approach to GEO satellites Virgin Galactic’s return to the skies News from SpaceX, and more Astranis’ novel approach to internet satellites is starting to pay off Astranis , a satellite internet startup based in San Francisco, said Wednesday that its first spacecraft completed a milestone test and will start bringing broadband access to rural Alaskans as soon as mid-June. It’s a major step for the company, which was founded in 2015 by John Gedmark and Ryan McLinko. By taking a first principles approach to satellite development, the pair bet that they could make a smaller, cheaper spacecraft for geosynchronous orbit — the orbit farthest from Earth and arguably the most inhospitable — and use them to bring internet to millions, or even billions, of people around the globe. Their bet is paying off: The company’s first satellite, Arcturus, launched on a Falcon ...

via https://ift.tt/jY2pi7M Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. I’m turning the wheel over to Rebecca Bellan next week, and she’s mostly steering things this week (I had to add a few of my thoughts in here cuz I can’t help myself). You’re in good hands! The big news before the Memorial Day holiday weekend caught many by surprise. I’m talking about the Tesla-Ford agreement. The deal will mean Tesla tech, specifically its charging port, will be integrated into Ford’s second-generation EVs that are slated to come out in 2025. The deal was announced by Ford CEO Jim Farley and Tesla CEO Elon Musk via, you guessed it, a Twitter Spaces — Musk’s latest push toward turning Twitter into an actual town square. No glitches for this one, at least.  In the future, Ford’s next generation of EVs will be equipped with Tesla’s charge port, called the North American Charging Standard, start...