News of Robots

Looks like a mechanical ostrich without the top part... 

I can imagine many exciting applications, apart from sports, in the Geriatric & Arthritic Track Sports League (nearly 30 seconds to cover 100 metres Vs. Usain Bolt, 2009, under 10 seconds), such as deliveries of parcels (the knock on the door and Two Legs is here), or policing (chasing offenders along busy streets: OAPs and dwarves do break the law, sometimes...), among others.

https://newatlas.com/robotics/cassie-bipedal-robot-guinness-world-record-100-meters/?

Bipedal Cassie sets Guinness World Record for robotic 100-meter sprint - newatlas.com A machine named Cassie has set a Guinness World Record for the 100-meter dash by a bipedal robot, and while it’s far from the blistering pace of the world’s best athletes, it is an impressive ... newatlas.com

Blender Bot, the A.I. chatbot

From Grauniad of the UK

Correctly prompted, he also dislikes Blacks and Muslims 

Blender Bot, the prototype A.I. chatbot developed by Meta, the company that owns Facebook, has a number of pet hates, presumably based on what he has read on the internet: so, Blender Bot does not like and does not use Facebook; he does not like Jews; and, last but not least, he is a fan of Donald Trump. 

Dear, oh, dear...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/09/blenderbot-meta-chatbot-facebook

Meet BlenderBot, Meta’s AI chatbot, that loves slamming Facebook Launched on Friday, BlenderBot is a prototype of Meta’s conversational AI, which, according to Facebook’s parent company, can converse on nearly any topic. On the demo website, members of the ... www.theguardian.com

Tesla's Self-driving Technology

 "I think there is a bug in the software package running the Tesla self-driving cars: it was meant to programme the self-drive cars to actually aim for, and run over, any kids coming into view. But it's not working up to standards, apparently, missing many of them, which is very troubling. We are going to correct this," conceded Prof. Harrison Tweak-Slasher, of Tesla, who has been working on the self-driving cars for several years. 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/09/tesla-self-driving-technology-safety-children

Tesla’s self-driving technology fails to detect children in the road, tests find | Tesla | The Guardian A safe-technology advocacy group issued claimed on Tuesday that Tesla’s full self-driving software represents a potentially lethal threat to child pedestrians, the latest in a series of claims ... www.theguardian.com

Programming Epson Robots

How to program Epson Robots: 

Epson RC+ Express Development Software Trial Download | Epson US

Is A.I. Over-promising Again?

 From the National Interest:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland-when-great-power-competition-meets-digital-world/what-if-machine-learning-less-it

Free eBooks on Microsoft Azure

Free eBooks from our friends at Redmond on Azure:

Cloud Native Infrastructure with Azure (azureedge.net)

Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches (azureedge.net) 

CSS/JS Compatibility Site

Use https://caniuse.com/ for compatibility on a large amount of CSS/JS items!

Minifying JS & CSS Code

 From Natalia Putik, who is a reader of this Blog:

"Web Site Optimization: Speed Up Your Site website optimization web speed optimize web site performance company is a pretty good tool, but it's not really user-friendly and it contains ads…

I searched for alternatives and found another tool. 

It's ad-free and quite straightforward. I just wanted to suggest you show it alongside the other one:

https://www.websiteplanet.com/webtools/jscssminifier/
 
This tool allows you to minify your JS & CSS code quickly and easily (and it's completely free too!)" 

COVID-19: News of Omicron

Structural and functional characterizations of infectivity and immune evasion of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron

Highlights:

• Omicron spike stably maintains an active conformation for receptor recognition

• Improved stability of Omicron enhances attachment but compromises viral fusion

• Mutations perturb the conformation of antigenic sites recognized by most antibodies

• Structurally restrained regions of RBM can be targets for COVID-19 countermeasures

Please see here:

Structural and functional characterizations of infectivity and immune evasion of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron: Cell

COVID-19: Vaccine News

SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological T cell memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron - 

Highlights

•T cells of vaccinees recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron

•RBD memory B cells’ recognition of Omicron is reduced

•A median of 11 CD4 and 10 CD8 spike epitopes are recognized in vaccinees

•Average preservation > 80% for Omicron at the epitope level

Please see here:

 SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological T cell memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron: Cell

Robot Painting

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/mind-blowing-ai-da-becomes-first-robot-to-paint-like-an-artist

‘Mind-blowing’: Ai-Da becomes first robot to paint like an artist | Robots | The Guardian AI algorithms prompt robot to interrogate, select, and decision-make to create a painting Devised in Oxford by Aidan Meller, Ai-Da was created over two years by a team of programmers, roboticists ... www.theguardian.com

News of Charging Stations Hacking

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-61006816

Isle of Wight: Council's electric vehicle chargers hacked to show porn site - BBC News Isle of Wight Council said staff were visiting the charge points to cover up the "inappropriate" website showing on the screen Electric vehicle charging points in a council's car parks have been ... www.bbc.co.uk

Double Eagle - Burnt City, Iran

 

Processing Sketchbook & Language

Please take a look at Welcome to Processing! / Processing.org - a flexible software sketchbook and an object-oriented language (with support for inheritance) for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts.

A useful book with step-by-step tutorials from elementary operations to genetic algorithms and neural nets is this: The Nature of Code

The significance of this environment is that it is for artists - it is geared towards the development of visual images. It is not a general purpose environment for solving generic dry and constipating problems.

News of AI - Robot Dogs

From Grauniad of the UK

It will be even better when we have robot policemen riding robot police horses patrolling the streets of our cities. Now, that's going to make things so much better. 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/16/robot-dogs-us-mexico-border-surveillance-technology

Dystopian robot dogs are the latest in a long history of US-Mexico border surveillance | US-Mexico border | The Guardian The border has long been a testing ground for a range of emerging surveillance and policing technologies, which activists have argued make the space even more dangerous to migrants, all in the ... www.theguardian.com

News of Omicron & Vaccination - the Science

From the Cell Magazine, February 3, 2022

Omicron’s message on vaccines: Boosting begets breadth: Cell

Details here: mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine boosters induce neutralizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant: Cell

News of Flying Car

 Flying car is now approaved:

This Flying Car Is Now Officially Approved to Take to the Skies (msn.com)

GIZMAG: Sweat-analyzing Smartwatch

"I get other people to sweat on my behalf: members of staff, that kind of thing... So, you could say I delegate the sweating to those who are good at it. Some people are, somehow, born with an ability to sweat for it." 

I must say, it wouldn't be good for The Duke of York, A.K.A. Randy Andy. The Duke would probably counter that he would have strictly no use for the smartwatch in question, since he does not sweat - and has never sweated. 

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/sweat-cortisol-smartwatch-stress/

Sweat-analyzing smartwatch could warn wearers of elevated stress It's important for people with conditions such as depression and anxiety to know when they're becoming stressed, so they can initiate coping strategies. An experimental new smartwatch could ... newatlas.com

News of AI - Disappearing Jobs

From the City AM (UK)

https://www.cityam.com/exclusive-the-jobs-sectors-and-countries-most-at-risk-of-automation-and-robotics/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Midday+newsletter+Nov+2020

Mamba: A Package Manager for Python

If you use conda to manage your packages, you might be interested in switching to mamba (Welcome to Mamba’s documentation! — documentation). It can be installed by running: conda install mamba -y

I noticed that the times that take to create an environment are reduced a lot just by changing to mamba. Also helped me reducing my TFS pipeline Docker build to go from over 20 minutes to approximately 4 minutes.

More discussion here:

Conda or Mamba for production? | EPI2ME Labs Blog