TLDR 2021-09-30

Google Lens will soon be upgraded with the ability to add text to visual searches in order to allow users to ask questions about what they see. It will use Multitask Unified Model (MUM), a new AI technology that can understand information across a wide range of formats and draw insights and connections between topics, concepts, and ideas. MUM is also being used across Google Search and video searches. Examples of how the feature would work are available in the article.

Amazon's new Astro home robot is designed to track behavior to help it perform its surveillance and helper duties. According to leaked documents, its person recognition system is heavily flawed. People who had worked on the project have criticized the robot's navigational abilities and build quality and cited privacy concerns. Astro is supposed to learn over time, so it has to track the humans around it and learn about its environment. It is designed to handle a lot of the data processing on device.

KidneyX, a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the American Society of Nephrology, has awarded The Kidney Project a $650,000 prize for its demonstration of a functional prototype of an implantable artificial kidney. The smartphone-sized device combines a hemofilter, which removes waste products and toxins from blood, and a bioreactor, which replicates other kidney functions. It is powered by blood pressure. The device could provide patients with kidney failure complete mobility and better physiological outcomes compared with dialysis.

DeepMind and the Met Office have collaborated to develop an AI system capable of forecasting rainfall up to two hours ahead of time. Most weather algorithms can make predictions several days into the future but struggle to make shorter-term forecasts as the algorithms take too long to calculate results. DeepMind's AI system was trained with a machine learning algorithm known as a generative adversarial network. The system outperforms traditional weather forecasting methods and newer machine learning-based approaches.

youki is a container runtime in Rust. Rust is one of the best languages for a container runtime as it has memory management, unlike C, and it can use system calls. youki is still in development, but it is almost ready for practical use.

Flowrift is a collection of beautifully designed Tailwind CSS UI blocks. It features a responsive preview and code view. Users can easily copy and share blocks. This repository links to Flowrift's site and development pages.

The 2022 Rivian R1T is the first fully electric pickup to go on sale. It will be available in January 2022 with a starting price of $67,500. The R1T is powered by four motors, one on each wheel, making light work of any obstacles or steep inclines. It can put out more than 800 horsepower and over 900 pound-feet of torque between the front and rear wheels. This article describes what it's like to ride in an R1T. Pictures of the vehicle are available.

School reopenings have disrupted the business of teenagers who spent the pandemic scalping products for hefty profits. These teens would regularly buy video game consoles and graphics cards with automated bots, making an average of $10,000 to $12,500 a month. Now that they are back in school, their computer use is monitored and restricted. User activity has decreased in online reseller groups since schools reopened in August and September. Bot sellers anticipate that activity will rise again once the holiday shopping season begins.