Boston Dynamics unveils its next-gen humanoid robot in a very disturbing way

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Apr 19, 2024 1:16 AM CDT

Boston Dynamics, one of the leaders in the robotics industry that has seen successful commercialization of its products, has unveiled its next-generation humanoid robot that replaces the well-known Atlas robot.

Boston Dynamics unveils its next-gen humanoid robot in a very disturbing way

A few days ago, Boston Dynamics announced it was retiring the hydraulic Atlas robot, which has gone viral numerous times throughout its 10 years of development with demonstrations of its impressive mobility capabilities and human-like movement. Boston Dynamics writes in its blog post that all the data gathered throughout the past 10 years has gone into developing a fully electric Atlas robot that will be designed for real-world applications such as working with people.

This new version of Atlas is stronger, more dexterous, more agile, and has been designed to move in the most efficient way possible to complete any given task. This design choice is different from the previous generation of Atlas, which was built around replicating the human range of motion. Next-gen Atlas will have movement capabilities that exceed a human's range of motion, which was demonstrated in an extremely impressive and disturbing way in the above video.

Continue reading: Boston Dynamics unveils its next-gen humanoid robot in a very disturbing way (full post)

Don't miss out: GEEKOM Mini IT12 Mini PC on sale for $440 off - grab yours today!

Sponsored Content | Deals | Apr 17, 2024 3:48 PM CDT

GEEKOM is dishing up a banging deal for TweakTown readers on its Mini IT12 mini PC. Powered by Intel's 12th-Gen Core i7-12650H processor, the GEEKOM Mini IT12 comes equipped with an impressive 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and the fast Bluetooth 5.2 and W-Fi 6E wireless technologies.

Don't miss out: GEEKOM Mini IT12 Mini PC on sale for $440 off - grab yours today!

This GEEKOM Mini IT12 can be yours for just $469, including free shipping in the United States, and it comes with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro pre-installed. When not on sale, this highly capable SFF computer sells for $909, but right now, you can save a huge $440 when buying it from GEEKOM. That's almost 52% off the normal price!

Enter coupon code tweaktownit12off at the checkout and save!

Continue reading: Don't miss out: GEEKOM Mini IT12 Mini PC on sale for $440 off - grab yours today! (full post)

Turtle Beach unveils redesigned versions of its Stealth Wireless Gaming Headsets

Kosta Andreadis | Audio, Sound & Speakers | Apr 19, 2024 12:57 AM CDT

Turtle Beach is refreshing its popular wireless gaming headset line-up for 2024, with three newly redesigned models coming launching in May: the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Wireless Gaming Headset, the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 Wireless Gaming Headset, and the high-end Turtle Beach Atlas Air Wireless Open Back PC Gaming Headset.

Turtle Beach unveils redesigned versions of its Stealth Wireless Gaming Headsets

The new Stealth 600 replaces the existing model at the popular $99.99 USD price point and sports a funky, modern look. It has low-latency 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth 5.2 and an impressive 80-hour battery with quick charge capabilities. Sound-wise, it features Turtle Beach's 50mm Nanoclear drivers with a microphone now powered by AI noise reduction technology.

The new Turtle Beach Stealth 500 slots into the more affordable $79.99 USD pricing bracket, and like the Stealth 600, it has low-latency 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth 5.2 to support gaming on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and mobile devices. Audio-wise, it features smaller 40mm drivers but still supports surround sound - however, the battery life is cut in half to up to 40 hours.

Continue reading: Turtle Beach unveils redesigned versions of its Stealth Wireless Gaming Headsets (full post)

NASA's Mars helicopter sends heart-warming final message back to Earth

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Apr 19, 2024 12:17 AM CDT

Ingenuity, NASA's Mars helicopter was forced to end its mission after taking some critical damage in a landing, but the small helicopter will not be going gently into that good Martian night.

NASA's Mars helicopter sends heart-warming final message back to Earth

NASA landed its Mars helicopter in the Jezero Crater with its Mars rover named Perseverance in 2021, with the initial goal of Ingenuity being a flight demonstration. NASA simply wanted to see if flight was possible on another planet.

Ingenuity achieved this goal and became the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extra-terrestrial flight. Ingenuity was only intended to make five flights, but went on to complete 72 across its three years of service, serving as a reconnaissance vehicle for Perseverance by scouting areas of interest and upcoming terrain which NASA can then use to map the safest path for Perseverance.

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Samsung begins emergency mode: all Samsung execs to now work 6 days a week

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Apr 19, 2024 12:01 AM CDT

Samsung is forcing all of the executives from its Samsung Group units to work 6-day weeks from as early as this week, in a shift to "emergency mode" reports the Korea Economic Daily.

Samsung begins emergency mode: all Samsung execs to now work 6 days a week

The emergency mode shift is happening because of the South Korea won and its sharp depreciation, rising oil prices, and high borrowing costs are amplifying uncertainies in business, after some of Samsung's businesses delivered poorer-than-expected results last year.

A Samsung Group company executive said: "Considering that performance of our major units, including Samsung Electronics Co., fell short of expectations in 2023, we are introducing the six-day work week for executives to inject a sense of crisis and make all-out efforts to overcome it".

Continue reading: Samsung begins emergency mode: all Samsung execs to now work 6 days a week (full post)

Meteorologist warns of future 'weather wars' using cloud seeding after torrential rain in Dubai

If you haven't seen the torrential rain flooding Dubai in the UAE, well, the country has experienced extreme flooding after the gigantic downpour on Monday. The downpour disrupted everything in Dubai, closing schools and flooding homes and businesses.

Meteorologist warns of future 'weather wars' using cloud seeding after torrential rain in Dubai

A meteorologist has warned that potential future "weather wars" will happen between countries if cloud seeding technology gets "out of hand". There have been theories of how the torrential rain in Dubai occurred -- possibly by cloud seeding or chemtrails, geoengineering technology to make it rain -- something that sees chemicals injected into clouds, sparking precipitation (rain).

This kind of technology has been around for close to 100 years, with one of the notable uses of it in the last few years being China spending millions of dollars to control the weather ahead of the Beijing Olympics back in 2016, something the country had been using the modify the weather since 2008.

Continue reading: Meteorologist warns of future 'weather wars' using cloud seeding after torrential rain in Dubai (full post)

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian is moving on, so Hasbro is looking for a new studio to make 4

Kosta Andreadis | Gaming | Apr 18, 2024 11:31 PM CDT

Baldur's Gate 3 is not only one of 2023's most celebrated games but is widely considered one of the best RPGs ever made, an iconic release that will influence RPGs for years. Developer Larian is still hard at work on the game, with the upcoming Patch 7 set to expand and improve the branching story's "evil endings" with new cutscenes.

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian is moving on, so Hasbro is looking for a new studio to make 4

However, as part of a recent communityupdate on Steam, Larian confirmed that the studio is already working on its next game, and won't be Baldur's Gate 4. The studio's next two games will be moving on from the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

"After six years in the Forgotten Realms and much discussion and rumination, we've decided to seize the opportunity to develop our own IPs," Larian wrote. "We're currently working on two new projects, and we couldn't be more excited about what the future has in store." So, what does it mean for Baldur's Gate 4? Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are figuring that out.

Continue reading: Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian is moving on, so Hasbro is looking for a new studio to make 4 (full post)

NVIDIA AI GPUs trained Meta's new Llama 3 model for the cloud, edge, and RTX PCs

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Apr 18, 2024 11:00 PM CDT

NVIDIA has just announced optimizations across all of its platforms to accelerate Meta Llama 3, Meta's latest-generation large language model (LLM).

NVIDIA AI GPUs trained Meta's new Llama 3 model for the cloud, edge, and RTX PCs

The new Llama 3 model combined with NVIDIA accelerated computing provides developers, researchers, and businesses with innovation across various applications. Meta engineers trained their new Llama 3 on a computing cluster featuring 24,576 NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs linked through the NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand network; with support from NVIDIA, Meta tuned its network, software, and model architectures for its flagship Llama 3 LLM.

To further advance the state-of-the-art generative AI, Meta recently described plans to scale its AI GPU infrastructure to an astonishing 350,000 NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs. That's a lot of AI computing power, a ton of silicon, probably a city's worth of power, and an incredible sum of money on AI GPUs ordered by Meta from NVIDIA.

Continue reading: NVIDIA AI GPUs trained Meta's new Llama 3 model for the cloud, edge, and RTX PCs (full post)

Meta launches early versions of Llama 3 to fight with OpenAI and Google in the AI battle

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Apr 18, 2024 10:32 PM CDT

Meta has a nice surprise today: its latest large language model (LLM), Llama 3. The company explains its new Llama 3 8B contains 8 billion parameters, while its Llama 3 70B features 70 billion parameters.

Meta launches early versions of Llama 3 to fight with OpenAI and Google in the AI battle

Meta promises a gigantic increase in performance over the previous Llama 2 8B and Llama 2 70B models, with the company claiming that Llama 3 8B and Llama 3 70B are some of the best-performing generative AI models available today, trained on two custom-built 24,000 GPU clusters.

The company trained its new Llama 3 model on over 15 trillion tokens that were all collected from "publicly available sources," and that Met'a training dataset is 7x larger than what was used for Llama 2, and that includes 4x more code.

Continue reading: Meta launches early versions of Llama 3 to fight with OpenAI and Google in the AI battle (full post)

AI startup: AMD Instinct MI300X is 'far superior' option to NVIDIA Hopper H100 AI GPU

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Apr 18, 2024 10:00 PM CDT

AI startup TensorWave is one of the first with a publically deployed setup powered by AMD Instinct MI300X AI accelerators, and its CEO says they're a far better option than NVIDIA's dominant Hopper H100 AI GPU.

AI startup: AMD Instinct MI300X is 'far superior' option to NVIDIA Hopper H100 AI GPU

TensorWave started racking up AI systems powered by AMD's just-released Instinct MI300X AI accelerator, which it plans to lease the MI300X chips at a fraction of the cost of NVIDIA's Hopper H100 AI GPU. TensorWave plans to have 20,000 of AMD's new Instinct MI300X AI accelerators before the end of the year across two facilities, and has plans to have liquid-cooled systems online in 2025.

Continue reading: AI startup: AMD Instinct MI300X is 'far superior' option to NVIDIA Hopper H100 AI GPU (full post)

Samsung unveils world's fastest LPDDR5X memory: 10.7Gbps speeds, 32GB capacities per package

Anthony Garreffa | RAM | Apr 18, 2024 9:31 PM CDT

Samsung has just announced that it has developed the industry's first LPDDR5X memory, supporting the industry's highest performance at up to 10.7Gbps.

Samsung unveils world's fastest LPDDR5X memory: 10.7Gbps speeds, 32GB capacities per package

The South Korean giant uses 12nm-class process technology, with Samsung achieving the smallest chip size among existing LPDDR memory, which the company says solidifies its technological leadership in the low-power DRAM market. We have all seen the insatiable demand for AI, with on-device AI being a big future for processing AI workloads on devices, which is where low-power, high-performance LPDDR memory steps in.

YongCheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics, said: "As demand for low-power, high-performance memory increases, LPDDR DRAM is expected to expand its applications from mainly mobile to other areas that traditionally require higher performance and reliability such as PCs, accelerators, servers and automobiles. Samsung will continue to innovate and deliver optimized products for the upcoming on-device AI era through close collaboration with customers".

Continue reading: Samsung unveils world's fastest LPDDR5X memory: 10.7Gbps speeds, 32GB capacities per package (full post)