Latest News - Page 1011

German automaker Mercedes-Benz has high expectations that luxury car buyers will help usher in the transition from internal-combustion engines towards electric vehicles in the years to come.

The company is witnessing a trend towards EVs and wants to be carbon dioxide neutral by 2039. All Mercedes models will have electric versions by 2025 and will go fully electric-only after that year. In addition to being better for the environment - as automakers look to reduce CO2 emissions - Mercedes understand that it very well may be a better business decision as well.

Mercedes delivered around 31,000 EVs during the first two quarters of 2022 but has admitted it's essentially sold out of EV models through the rest of the year. Meanwhile, production will continue to accelerate as fast as possible - a difficult feat considering current semiconductor shortages and other logistical problems - though the company expects an easier time in 2023.

Yizhou Zhao won the NVIDIA #ExtendOmniverse contest with his "IndoorKit" for robotics simulation environments, enabling anyone to bring simulated bots to life with ease.

Contest participants were tasked with using the integrated development environment (IDE) of Omniverse Code and Omniverse while creating an extension that would benefit the community. The IndoorKit lets users click basic functions such as "add object," "add house," "load scene," "record scene," and similar buttons to easily environment aspects for the simulation.

Zhao is a Ph.D. student in statistics at UCLA and won the code contest aimed towards programmers, developers, engineers, technical artists, hobbyists and researchers - with the aim of creating Python-based tools for use in the metaverse.

Boston Dynamics has joined five other leading robotics companies to publish an open letter pledging that general-purpose robots should not be weaponized. Joining Boston Dynamics in the public statement were the following leading robotics companies: Agility, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree.

Each company will ensure their "advanced-mobility general-purpose robots" and software that makes them run will not be weaponized. In addition, they will work to ensure customers also didn't weaponize any of the products for nefarious purposes. They will actively review plans customers have for their products, while also exploring features that would prevent any intended weaponization.

The industry leaders also want lawmakers to work with them to promote the safe use of the robots and prevent possible future misuse.

Honda has unveiled the Prologue, its first electric SUV, as the Japanese automaker continues to show its efforts to transition towards electric vehicles. The all-wheel drive SUV

The Prologue includes an 11-inch driver display panel and 11.3-inch audio/connectivity display in the vehicle. Honda chose to use physical buttons for heating and air conditioning instead of relying on touch-sensitive controls on the touchscreen display.

Honda's Prologue will also be larger than Honda's popular CR-V and has a "modern and fresh design" that Honda hopes will look especially shiny in dealership showrooms.

Keanu Reeves must have cloned himself a while back because the guy just doesn't stop: Keanu reportedly wants to direct Netflix's upcoming adaption of BRZRKR... a comic book that Keanu Reeves took to Kickstarter to fund last year.

BRZRKR is about an immortal warrior that fights through the ages, similar to how John Wick seems to be in the trilogy... while BRZRKR was written by Keanu Reeves and writer Matt Kindt, the warrior himself looks virtually identical to Reeves and beats the sh*t out of people throughout history.

The comic book is being adapted into a live-action movie that Reeves will start in the leading role while debuting on Netflix, but during a recent interview, the Matrix and John Wick star said he was definitely interested in sitting in the director's chair for BRZRKR.

Restaurants struggling to find human workers are finding robots to be a good way to augment staff, eliminating repetitive tasks in the back of house. In the future, robots will continue advancing from test labs into restaurant kitchens, with restaurant owners willing to invest in automation.

Restaurant hosts, baristas, and drive-through operators are at the greatest risk of robotic automation, and 76% of restaurants already are using 3 or more automated tools, according to a recent report from Capterra. For restaurants already embracing automation, the majority of workers also found it easy to use the tools while at work, an important metric as additional technology is added.

Diners tend to be oblivious to the automation that is already underway, and that is currently acceptable - it will take some time for them to become welcoming to robots and non-human automation that they must interact with directly. Everything from traditional restaurants to fast food restaurants and pizza shops have custom robots they can rent for monthly dues - or purchase outright - and see if their operations benefit.

Activision-Blizzard creates a new executive role that will discuss news regarding the merger with Microsoft.

As Microsoft's proposed Activision-Blizzard buyout looms, the Call of Duty publisher is gearing up for a big transition period and has appointed a brand new communications executive that will exclusively focus on the merger.

Activision today announced the creation of the Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer role that will help "share the company's strategic direction and lead its communications efforts." Activision appointed board member Lulu Cheng Meservey as the new comms exec.

Criterion Games is back with Need for Speed Unbound, a new high-octane street racer with a rebellious graffiti art style.

Need For Speed Unbound is due to hit PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC this December, bringing high-performance gaming with a flamboyant anime style. The game mergers cel-shaded NPCs with high-res 3D environments and car models, and there's even comic book-style effects like speed lines and drawn tire smoke.

The new NFS will have an offline singleplayer campaign where players can bet on high-stakes street races, even offering up pink slips to their cars. There's also a seamless multiplayer mode with competitive and free roam activities, and future content planned, which could include monetization.

Sony is taking its first big step in unifying PlayStation games across consoles and PC.

Today Insomniac Games rolled out an update that allows gamers to link PlayStation Network accounts with Spider-Man on Steam. This integration is a big deal for Sony's cross-platform future and is one step closer to full and meaningful integration with its PlayStation games--especially singleplayer games.

The update follows the synergy creation guidelines that we presented days ago. Sony is going about this in the best way possible by offering incentives and rewards for players to link their PlayStation Network and Steam accounts. This development indicates that Sony is open to creating its own type of Ubisoft Connect platform that will offer in-game rewards for completing specific activities--which is something we advised in our content.

Pharmacy giant Walgreens is embracing prescription-packaging robots designed to free up pharmacists' time while greatly reducing costs.

Pharmacist workloads could be cut by 25% and may save the company $1 billion per year - and is an effort that will continue to accelerate in the future. Controlled medication and time-sensitive prescriptions still require a pharmacist to sign and validate the prescription.

Walgreens might see half of its prescription volume from stores filled at automated centers by 2025, which would make it possible for pharmacists to focus more on direct interaction with patients. Pharmacists will now be able to provide direct medical services and patient outreach, which is currently limited due to tasks that aren't automated.

SpaceX has taken to its social channels to announce that it launched its Falcon 9 rocket with its Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

Elon Musk's company took to Twitter to provide live updates on the launch and the condition of the Dragon capsule as it separated from the rocket. The Dragon capsule harbored the Crew-5 astronauts and launched from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The flight to the ISS is expected to take approximately 29 hours, and the four astronauts currently aboard the Dragon capsule are: NASA's Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

SpaceX's launch and the presence of NASA's Nicole Mann marks the first time a Native American woman has reached the final frontier, along with cosmonaut Anna Kikina being the very first Russian to fly on a private American spacecraft. On October 1, Mann said during a press conference, "I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage. We're all from very unique, different backgrounds. We all came from different educations and different job specialties. And it's really great to see everyone coming together."

Samsung has just hosted its recent Samsung Tech Day 2022 event, where the company updated the world on its work on next-gen GDDR7 memory.

The company hosted its Samsung Tech Day 2022 event in-person for the first time in 3 years, at the Signia by Hilton San Jose, California, where the South Korean giant talked about everything it is working on: 5G models, 200-megapixel ISOCELL HP3 camera sensors, DRAM and NAND flash memory, next-gen GDDR7 memory, and so much more.

Samsung talked about its next-gen DRAM solutions during the Samsung Tech Day 2022 event, where it has 32Gb DDR5 DRAM, and 8.5Gbps LPDDR5X memory, but this is the doozy: totally next-gen 36Gbps GDDR7 DRAM for the data center, HPC, mobile, gaming and automotive market segments.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to photograph a galaxy pair 700 million light-years away from Earth.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have taken to their respective channels to share an incredible image of the galaxy pair called VV 191. Researchers combined data from Webb and Hubble and were able to trace light that was emitted by the large white, elliptical galaxy seen on the left of the above image through the spiral galaxy on the right. The results were that researchers were able to identify the effects of interstellar dust throughout the spiral galaxy.

Webb's near-infrared data and Hubble's visible light data revealed to researchers the long, extremely dusty spiral arms in increased detail, which makes them appear to be overlapping with the elliptical galaxy's bulge in the center. Despite the image making the galaxies look like they are next to each other, they actually aren't overlapping at all.

The White House is gearing up to combat rogue artificial intelligence systems with its newly unveiled "blueprint" for its AI Bill of Rights.

The Biden Administration revealed on Tuesday its Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, a document that is designed to be the guidelines for the development of artificial intelligence systems and any other automated systems.

The AI Bill of Rights is designed to protect the American public from AI systems violating the American public's rights, and according to the White House press release, the AI Bill of Rights will focus on five principles: Safe and Effective Systems, Algorithmic Discrimination Protections, Data Privacy, Notice and Explanation, and Human Alternatives, Consideration, and Fallback.

NASA's Earth-observing satellite called Landsat 8 has captured an incredible natural-color image of Hurricane Ian's eye.

The Landsat 8 satellite used its Operational Land Imager to capture the above photograph of Hurricane Ian's eye on September 28, approximately three hours before it made landfall on the coast of Caya Costa, Florida. NASA explains on its Earth Observatory website that the eye of Hurricane Ian is the fair weather seen at the center of the storm and that the eye is surrounded by what researchers call the "eyewall", which is the part of the hurricane that has the strongest winds.

According to the report, the swirling clouds seen on the edges of the eyewall are called mesovortices, which are only found in hurricanes that have particularly strong winds. When Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida, the National Hurricane Center reported sustained wind speeds of 150 miles per hour, which is strong enough to tear roofs off houses, collapse power lines, and cause widespread damage to almost anything in its path.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided to follow through with his deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media company, Twitter.

In what seems like a strange turn of events, Musk has decided to go ahead with the acquisition of Twitter after attempting to pull out of the deal, citing Twitter's undisclosed number of bot accounts on the platform. The SpaceX CEO initially agreed to purchase Twitter for $54.20 a share back in April, which caused the company's share price to spike to above $50 a share.

However, Musk began pushing back on Twitter over the aforementioned bot accounts on the platform, which then resulted in the Tesla CEO attempting to pull out of the deal completely, sending the company's stock price back down to the mid-$30s. Since Musk announced that he is now reversed his decision and will follow through with buying Twitter, the company's stock price has jumped by 22% in a single day to $52.

If you thought you were seeing advertisements everywhere already, they might soon start polluting the skies, according to a new paper released by researchers.

The new paper published in the journal Aerospace explored the cost and strategies that would need to be put into place to get massive advertisements from brands up in the sky over cities. The researchers from the Moscow-based technical institute Skoltech along with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, found that a group of satellites of no more than fifty would need to be sent into orbit to create the ad, and that conducting such a mission would only cost approximately $65 million.

The team of researchers explored the technicals of this new form of advertising, called "space advertising", and according to the paper, each of the satellites would need to be considerably large to be able to reflect enough light to produce an image that's visible from Earth. The researchers estimated that a CubeSat satellite would need to sport a solar sail that's approximately 350 square foot and that the satellites wouldn't just showcase one ad from a brand but many different ads - rotating through a timer.

Facebook founder and now Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a decision to move head first into creating the Metaverse, a decision that has cost him billions of dollars.

Zuckerberg's decision to pivot his entire company toward developing the Metaverse has undoubtedly come with severe impacts, as the Meta CEO has reportedly lost more than $71 billion in 2022, and there is now talk of mass layoffs coming to Meta. Zuckerberg's net worth dropping $71 billion throughout the year left the Meta CEO with (only) $55.6 billion, which resulted in him dropping to the 20th richest person in the world - his lowest position on Bloomberg's world's richest individuals ladder since 2014.

While there are many factors as to why Zuckerberg's net worth has dropped significantly, the push into the Metaverse is one big reason, as the company recently released a public beta for Meta Quest that was met with heavy criticism from users that turned Zuckerberg's creation into a memed laughing stock. Since Zuckerberg holds the majority of his wealth in hundreds of millions of Meta shares, and the public beta release didn't go as planned, Meta's stock value plummeted, with investors losing faith in the project.

Intel has officially launched its new Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards, with Arc A770 Limited Edition and Arc A750 Limited Edition graphics cards being reviewed by a few outlets and YouTubers today.

Well, perfect timing would have it that leaker Moore's Law is Dead is back with some fresh Arc launch leaks, where his sources have told him it truly is a dire situation out there in the odyssey that is Arc. MLID's first source said that Intel has been ghosting their GPU purchaser, but fully responding to their CPU guy.

The second source said that they were simply never getting Intel Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards, while the third source said that they simply have "no info" on Arc A770 shipments and that they don't think that they'll get any Arc A-series desktop GPUs whatsoever.

Automaker Rivian Automotive manufactured 7,363 vehicles and delivered 6,584 vehicles during Q3, according to the company.

The company has the R1S SUV, R1T pickup truck, and delivery vans that Amazon is currently using - and remains focused on ramping up production numbers of these vehicles before drastically launching new models.

The Q3 production number is a strong 67% quarter-over-quarter increase when the company made right around 4,400 vehicles during the second quarter.