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Long-haul flights are a necessary evil and I was intrigued this week to see Air New Zealand is launching the world’s first sleep pods for economy class travellers.  This is a rare bit of good news for aviation design. I’m still smarting from Ryanair’s idea to remove toilets from planes and its  Skyrider concept, a “standing seat” from the pits of hell.  It’s baaaaaack! The AvioInteriors Skyrider saddle seat is returning to #AIX18 after its cont

When you read a sentence like this one, your past experience tells you that it’s written by a thinking, feeling human. And, in this case, there is indeed a human typing these words: [Hi, there!] But these days, some sentences that appear remarkably humanlike are actually generated by artificial intelligence systems trained on massive amounts of human text. People are so accustomed to assuming that fluent language comes from a thinking, feeling human that evidence to the contrary can be di

Steph Curry is currently celebrating another NBA championship — just 10 years after the star feared he’d never play again. Curry’s early years at the Golden State Warriors were plagued by chronic ankle injuries. In 2013, the team’s new performance director, Keke Lyles, proposed a new explanation for the problem. Lyles believed Curry was overly reliant on his ankles for speed. The coach devised a training program that transferred power generation to the marksman&rsqu

Artificial intelligence has completely upended the business world. Whether you’re a fledgling startup or a billion-dollar global conglomerate, the way you do business today is radically different than it was just five years ago. In the modern paradigm, one of your company’s greatest assets is the data generated by your employees, clients, and customers. And, sadly, most businesses are leaving money on the table by simply storing that data away somewhere to collect digital dust. The

Google shut down Hangouts for Workspace in February, but that’s not enough for the search giant: it’s now killing the mobile Hangouts app as well. In a recent blogpost, the tech behemoth announced that it’ll bid farewell to the feature in November 2022. People still using Hangouts are urged to switch to the Chat app or Chat in Gmail. Credit: Google As for Hangouts users on the web? Well, Google won’t start nagging for you to switch until July. The company will automatica

Reducing carbon emissions from roads, railways and shipping requires implementing a range of solutions simultaneously. As far as cars are concerned, cutting the number of journeys altogether (by making it easier for people to walk and cycle and improving public transport), changing the fuel in vehicles and making the most of those vehicles already on the road must all play a part. None of these solutions are sufficient on their own. In 2030, the sale of new diesel and petrol passenger cars will

A Google AI engineer recently stunned the world by announcing that one of the company’s chatbots had become sentient. He was subsequently placed on paid administrative leave for his outburst. His name is Blake Lemoine and he sure seems like the right person to talk about machines with souls. Not only is he a professional AI developer at Google, but he’s also a Christian priest. He’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of science and religion. The only problem is that the wh

Friday saw the overturning of Roe V Wade, giving US state governments the right to restrict abortion or ban it altogether.  The result is a massive loss of bodily autonomy for women, trans, and non-binary folk (basically anyone with a womb). For those living in banned states, it means difficulty accessing abortions elsewhere or being forced to give birth in a country with no universal healthcare, childcare, or science-based sex education.  Understandably, there’s a huge pouring

Business owners have known the value of loyalty for a long time. From customers collecting stamps for retail loyalty programmes, to Air Miles, coupons, plastic cards and mobile apps, the mechanism has changed but the rationale remains: repeat purchases are key for growth in almost all businesses. Similarly, businesses also know that employee loyalty will help a company advance. From driving positive customer experiences to improved productivity and production, the benefits of employee loyalty a

A unique electric car has broken the speed record at the 2022 Goodwood Hillclimb track, an annual demonstration of racing vehicles in the UK. Driven by ex-F2 driver Max Chilton, the so-called McMurtry Spierling set a new record of 39.08 seconds on the 1.86km course. This shaved off about 0.8 seconds from the previous record holder, the Volkswagen ID.R. And, for your enjoyment, here’s footage of the Spierling smashing the record:     The 90s Batmobile-like design isn’t the

When it comes to leadership in today’s startup world, founders, and CEOs are chained to their work more than ever before due to high investor demands, increasingly blurred lines between personal and professional life thanks to remote work, and tech that enables them to be reached — and reach out to employees — 24/7. But this always-on approach can also lead to higher risk of stress and even burnout. While, since the pandemic started, employee burnout has been put in the spotli

In my previous job at a startup based in Amsterdam, my job description was – how to put this – ‘flexible’. As a non-technical member of a company developing a new kind of scalable, real-time graph database that was still under development, possibilities for marketing were limited, sales would be preliminary, and branding was still dependent on positioning. As any early-stage startup member, I had to find something to do that would contribute to the company. I had a vague

In overturning Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case does not merely deprive women of reproductive control and physical agency as a matter of constitutional law, but it also changes their relationship with the online world. Anyone in a state where abortion is now illegal who relies on the internet for information, products , and services related to reproductive health is subject to online policing. All women of child-bearing age, regardless of how secure and how privile

This article was originally published on .cult by Ashutosh Mishra. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. Practice is the key to mastery in any skill or field of knowledge. You don’t learn things in a day. You need weeks, months, and sometimes even years of consistent practice to be good at something. React, in general, is also

The past month has seen a frenzy of articles, interviews, and other types of media coverage about Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer who told The Washington Post that LaMDA, a large language model created for conversations with users, is “sentient.” After reading a dozen different takes on the topic, I have to say that the media has become (a bit) disillusioned with the hype surrounding current AI technology. A lot of the articles discussed why deep neural networks are not &ldquo

NASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. They’ll mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb – the largest space telescope ever built – begins collecting scientific data that will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. But it has taken nearly eight months of travel, setup, testing, and calibration to

Reinforcement learning is one of the exciting branches of artificial intelligence. It plays an important role in game-playing AI systems, modern robots, chip-design systems, and other applications. There are many different types of reinforcement learning algorithms, but two main categories are “model-based” and “model-free” RL. They are both inspired by our understanding of learning in humans and animals. Nearly every book on reinforcement learning contains a c