Data Storage

Ask Slashdot: What Happened To Holographic Data Storage? (youtube.com) 86

dryriver writes: In an episode of the BBC's Tomorrow's World broadcasted all the way back in 1984, a presenter shows hands-on how a laser hologram of a real-world object can be recorded onto a transparent plastic medium, erased again by heating the plastic with an electric current, and then re-recorded differently. The presenter states that computer scientists are very interested in holograms because the future of digital data storage may lie in them. This was 35 years ago. Holographic data storage for PCs, smartphones, etc. still is not available commercially. Why is this? Are data storage holograms too difficult to create? Or did nobody do enough research on the subject, getting us all stuck with mechanical hard disks and SSDs instead? Where are the hologram drives that appeared "so promising" three decades ago?
Power

Secretive Energy Startup Backed By Bill Gates Achieves Solar Breakthrough (cnn.com) 156

A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet. From a report: Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius. Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven -- one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you'd find on the surface of the sun. The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution. "We are rolling out technology that can beat the price of fossil fuels and also not make the CO2 emissions," Bill Gross, Heliogen's founder and CEO, told CNN Business. "And that's really the holy grail."
Intel

Intel Unveils 7nm Ponte Vecchio GPU Architecture For Supercomputers and AI (hothardware.com) 28

MojoKid writes: Intel has unveiled its first discrete GPU solution that will hit the market in 2020, code name Ponte Vecchio. Based on 7nm silicon manufacturing and stack chiplet design with Intel's Foveros tech, Ponte Vecchio will target HPC markets for supercomputers and AI training in the datacenter. According to HotHardware, Ponte Vecchio will employ a combination of both its Foveros 3D packaging and EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge) technologies, along with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and Compute Express Link (CXL), which will operate over the newly ratified PCIe 5.0 interface and serve as Ponte Vecchio's high-speed switch fabric connecting all GPU resources. Intel is billing Ponte Vecchio as its first exascale GPU, proving its meddle in the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Aurora supercomputer. Aurora will employ a topology of six Ponte Vecchio GPUs and two Intel Xeon Scalable processors based on Intel's next generation Sapphire Rapids architecture, along with Optane DC Persistent Memory on a single blade. The new supercomputer is schedule to arrive sometime in 2021.
Transportation

Ford Introduces Mustang Mach-E Electric Crossover (electrek.co) 194

140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Battery electric vehicle (BEV) fans are all excited about the introduction of an all-electric SUV by Ford. Specs and pricing are very similar to Tesla. Interior also is very similar with a large touchscreen. Elon Musk congratulated Ford on Twitter and Ford returned the compliments. Die-hard Tesla fans are saying Tesla is still better. Other BEV fans are welcoming Ford. I, for one, welcome the more affordable all-electric, non-compliance BEV (Ford's words, not mine). Ford's Mustang Mach-E is expected to achieve between 210 miles and at least 300 miles of range on a full charge, depending on the model. Top performance models will achieve 0 to 60 mph in the mid-three-second range with an estimated 459 horsepower and 612 lb.-ft. of torque.

Unlike Tesla's Model 3 or upcoming Model Y, the Mach-E qualifies for federal tax incentives of up to $7,500. It will range from $43,895 for the base "Select" model to roughly $60,500 for the GT model.
United States

The World's Fastest Supercomputers Hit Higher Speeds Than Ever With Linux (zdnet.com) 124

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In the latest Top 500 supercomputer ratings, the average speed of these Linux-powered racers is now an astonishing 1.14 petaflops. The fastest of the fast machines haven't changed since the June 2019 Top 500 supercomputer list. Leading the way is Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Summit system, which holds top honors with an HPL result of 148.6 petaflops. This is an IBM-built supercomputer using Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. In a rather distant second place is another IBM machine: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Sierra system. It uses the same chips, but it "only" hit a speed of 94.6 petaflops.

Close behind at No. 3 is the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, with an HPL mark of 93.0 petaflops. TaihuLight was developed by China's National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC) and is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. It is powered exclusively by Sunway's SW26010 processors. Sunway's followed by the Tianhe-2A (Milky Way-2A). This is a system developed by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). It's deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in China. Powered by Intel Xeon CPUs and Matrix-2000 accelerators, it has a top speed of 61.4 petaflops. Coming at No. 5, the Dell-built, Frontera, a Dell C6420 system is powered by Intel Xeon Platinum processors. It speeds along at 23.5 petaflops. It lives at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas. The most powerful new supercomputer on the list is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Computational Innovations (CCI)'s AiMOS. It made the list in the 25th position with 8.0 petaflops. The IBM-built system, like Summit and Sierra, is powered by Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA V100 GPUs.
In closing, ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes: "Regardless of the hardware, all 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers have one thing in common: They all run Linux."
Power

Wind Farms Are Sending Giant Turbine Blades To Landfills (staradvertiser.com) 334

The Associated Press reports that renewable energy companies like MidAmerican Energy face an unexpected problem when they try to replace the giant blades from their wind turbines Landfill operators thought the composite blades, cut in 40-foot or larger sections, could be readily crushed and compacted. "But blades are so strong -- because they need to be strong to do their job -- they just don't break," said Amie Davidson, an Iowa Department of Natural Resources solid waste supervisor. "Sometimes pieces fly off and damage equipment" in the compacting process, she said. "Landfills are really struggling to manage them, and they just decide they can't accept them...." Bill Rowland, president of the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations, said he's unsure "we as a society" considered what would happen to the blades as older turbines are repowered. "There wasn't a plan in place to say, 'How are we going to recycle these?' 'How are we going to reduce the impact on landfills?'" said Rowland, director of the Landfill of North Iowa near Clear Lake...

When it started investing in wind, MidAmerican believed a blade recycling option would emerge. "Thus far, it hasn't," said Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for MidAmerican, adding that the company is talking with other wind developers that may be interested in using the blades for their own projects...

The difficulty in reusing blades adds to the complaints opponents make against wind energy. Some who live near the turbines complain that low-frequency noise and light flickering from the blades make them ill. And the spinning blades can kill migrating birds and bats.... Kerri Johannsen, the Iowa Environmental Council's energy program director, said more recycling solutions are needed. But, she added, it's not a reason to "turn away from wind energy -- a solution that can help mitigate the most dangerous threats from climate change...."

According to the article, one U.S. Department of Energy researcher told the Des Moines Register that wind energy will create over one million tons of fiberglass and other composite waste, adding that "The scale of the issue is quite large... And it's a larger sustainability issue."
Robotics

You Can Now Buy Pretend Food for Your $2,900 Sony Robot Dog (gizmodo.co.uk) 40

Gizmodo reports that Sony "will happily sell you make-believe virtual meals" for their robotic Aibo dog to unlock tricks, one of several new features added since its re-launch in 2017: The new feature that will appeal to most owners, however, is Aibo Food, which allows the robot to be virtually fed using augmented reality through the Aibo smartphone app. Meals can be purchased using coins, which are awarded to users through random actions like repeatedly using the Aibo app, or during special events. But once users runs out of coins, which is bound to quickly happen as they try out the new Aibo Food feature, they can either wait for more Sony handouts or purchase additional coins for a fee.

Sony points out that Aibo's performance and features aren't dependent on whether the dog is regularly fed -- it is, after all, just a robot. So hopefully the company won't change its mind down the line, making your pup act sluggish and distracted when you're not forking out for pretend food.... Of course, other complications arrive once you start feeding an animal, and the new software update also allows users to finally potty train their Aibos using a new mapping feature so the robot doesn't pretend-shit all over your house.

This appears to be a free feature, until Sony realises it can sell owners virtual poop bags.

There's also a new web-based API/developer program that lets you program the robot dog to perform custom actions -- and Aibo dogs now come equipped with some new patrol/security functionality.

"Using its facial recognition and room-mapping capabilities, Aibo will be able to patrol homes and locate various family members, providing reports on where everyone is, and helping owners track down specific people, according to Sony."
Robotics

Boeing Fires Its Fuselage-Assembling Robots, Goes Back To Using Humans (seattletimes.com) 100

schwit1 quotes the Seattle Times: After enduring a manufacturing mess that spanned six years and cost millions of dollars as it implemented a large-scale robotic system for automated assembly of the 777 fuselage, Boeing has abandoned the robots and will go back to relying more on its human machinists...

The technology was implemented gradually from 2015 inside a new building on the Everett site. But right from the start, the robots proved painful to set up and error-prone, producing damaged fuselages and others that were incompletely assembled and had to be finished by hand. "The Fuselage Automated Upright Build process is a horrible failure," one mechanic told The Seattle Times in 2016. Another called the system "a nightmare" that was snarling 777 production. Yet Boeing insisted then that these were teething pains that would pass... The automation has never delivered its promise of reduced hand labor and Boeing has had to maintain a substantial workforce of mechanics to finish the work of the robots. Because of the errors in the automation, that often took longer than if they had done it all by hand from the start...

It's taken six years to finally throw in the towel.

Yet the article also notes that Boeing will continue to use its highly-automated autonomous robotic systems on other parts of their 777 assembly process.
Power

Lessons From the Cyberattack On India's Largest Nuclear Power Plant (thebulletin.org) 113

Dan Drollette shares an article by two staffers at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

"Indian officials acknowledged on October 30th that a cyberattack occurred at the country's Kudankulam nuclear power plant," they write, adding that "According to last Monday's Washington Post, Kudankulam is India's biggest nuclear power plant, 'equipped with two Russian-designed and supplied VVER pressurized water reactors with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts each.'"

So what did we learn? While reactor operations at Kudankulam were reportedly unaffected, this incident should serve as yet another wake-up call that the nuclear power industry needs to take cybersecurity more seriously. There are worrying indications that it currently does not: A 2015 report by the British think tank Chatham House found pervasive shortcomings in the nuclear power industry's approach to cybersecurity, from regulation to training to user behavior. In general, nuclear power plant operators have failed to broaden their cultures of safety and security to include an awareness of cyberthreats. (And by cultures of safety and security, those in the field -- such as the Fissile Materials Working Group -- refer to a broad, all-embracing approach towards nuclear security, that takes into account the human factor and encompasses programs on personnel reliability and training, illicit trafficking interception, customs and border security, export control, and IT security, to name just a few items. The Hague Communique of 2014 listed nuclear security culture as the first of its three pillars of nuclear security, the other two being physical protection and materials accounting.)

This laxness might be understandable if last week's incident were the first of its kind. Instead, there have been over 20 known cyber incidents at nuclear facilities since 1990. This number includes relatively minor items such as accidents from software bugs and inadequately tested updates along with deliberate intrusions, but it demonstrates that the nuclear sector is not somehow immune to cyber-related threats. Furthermore, as the digitalization of nuclear reactor instrumentation and control systems increases, so does the potential for malicious and accidental cyber incidents alike to cause harm.

This record should also disprove the old myth, unfortunately repeated in Kudankulam officials' remarks, that so-called air-gapping effectively secures operational networks at plants. Air-gapping refers to separating the plant's internet-connected business networks from the operational networks that control plant processes; doing so is intended to prevent malware from more easily infected business networks from affecting industrial control systems. The intrusion at Kudankulam so far seems limited to the plant's business networks, but air gaps have failed at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio in 2003 and even classified U.S. military systems in 2008. The same report from Chatham House found ample sector-wide evidence of employee behavior that would circumvent air gaps, like charging personal phones via reactor control room USB slots and installing remote access tools for contractors... [R]evealing the culprits and motives associated with the Kudankulam attack matters less for the nuclear power industry than fixing the systemic lapses that enabled it in the first place.

"The good news is that solutions abound..." the article concludes, noting guidance, cybersecurity courses, technical exchanges, and information through various security-minded public-private partnerships. "The challenge now is integrating this knowledge into the workforce and maintaining it over time...

"But last week's example of a well-established nuclear power program responding to a breach with denial, obfuscation, and shopworn talk of so-called 'air-gaps' demonstrates how dangerously little progress the industry has made to date."
Printer

New Micro 3D Printing Technology Wins Prestigious NZ Engineering Award (callaghaninnovation.govt.nz) 18

Long-time Slashdot reader ClarkMills quotes New Zealand's Innovation Agency: New 3D printing technology creating highly detailed objects, smaller than a strand of human hair, has won the 2019 ENVI Engineering Innovation Award (Engineering New Zealand Awards). Micromaker3D, powered by breakthrough Laminated Resin Printing (LRP), makes it easy and more accessible to create detailed submillimetre structures for applications such as sensors, wearables, point-of-care diagnostics, micro-robotics or aerospace components.... LRP enables the printing of submillimetre structures with complex geometries of up to 100 per cent density, in extraordinary low-layer thicknesses and with imaging speeds as quick as one second per layer independent of complexity or density...

The judges saw MicroMaker3D as a gamechanger and believe it will spark many other innovations... The ENVI Engineering Innovation Award category is described as: "A breathtakingly clever engineering project or product that has solved an age-old problem or shifted from the 'always done this way' mentality...."

Callaghan Innovation is working to take the technology global, from the development and demonstration phase to commercial reality...

Lead engineer Neil Glasson points out that while a human hair is about 100 microns in width, "we're looking at five-micron resolution."
Iphone

Germany Forces Apple To Let Other Mobile Wallet Services Use iPhone's NFC Chip 56

A new German law passed yesterday requires Apple to allow other mobile payments services access to the iPhone's NFC chip for payments to allow them to fully compete with Apple Pay. 9to5Mac reports: Apple initially completely locked down the NFC chip so that it could be used only by Apple Pay. It later allowed some third-party apps to use the chip but has always refused to do so for other mobile payment apps. Reuters reports that the law doesn't name Apple specifically, but would apply to the tech giant. The piece somewhat confusingly refers to access to the NFC chip by third-party payment apps as Apple Pay.

"A German parliamentary committee unexpectedly voted in a late-night session on Wednesday to force the tech giant to open up Apple Pay to rival providers in Germany," reports Reuters. "This came in the form of an amendment to an anti-money laundering law that was adopted late on Thursday by the full parliament and is set to come into effect early next year. The legislation, which did not name Apple specifically, will force operators of electronic money infrastructure to offer access to rivals for a reasonable fee." Apple says that the change would be harmful: "We are surprised at how suddenly this legislation was introduced. We fear that the draft law could be harmful to user friendliness, data protection and the security of financial information."
Portables (Apple)

MacBook Pro Teardown Confirms the New Keyboard Is Basically Just the Old, Good Keyboard 43

iFixit's teardown of the new 16-inch MacBook Pro confirms that the keyboard uses the more reliable scissor-style switches that Apple first introduced in its Magic Keyboards in 2015. The Verge reports: The switches on the 16-inch MacBook Pro are so similar to the standalone keyboard, in fact, that iFixit's report says that keys are interchangeable between the two products. The change comes after a long, multiyear debate between Apple and customers over the butterfly switches, causing Apple to revamp the mechanism multiple times to block debris and add extra strength. Apple was also forced to acknowledge that the keyboards were problematic, and offered an extended warranty program for those laptops. Per iFixit, the new keys also have more travel when you press them (about 0.5 mm more), and the keycaps themselves are about 0.2 mm thicker compared to the much-maligned butterfly switches. The teardown also notes that the clips that attach the keycaps to the switches appear to be more reinforced to make it easier to remove or replace them down the line.
AMD

AMD Launches 16-Core Ryzen 9 3950X At $750, Beating Intel's $2K 18-Core Chip (hothardware.com) 67

MojoKid writes: AMD officially launched its latest many-core Zen 2-based processor today, a 16-core/32-thread beast known as the Ryzen 9 3950X. The Ryzen 9 3950X goes head-to-head against Intel's HEDT flagship line-up like the 18-core Core i9-9980XE but at a much more reasonable price point of $750 (versus over $2K for the Intel chip). The Ryzen 9 3950X has base and boost clocks of 3.5GHz and 4.7GHz, respectively. The CPU cores at the heart of the Ryzen 9 39050X are grouped into two, 7nm 8-core chiplets, each with dual, four-core compute complexes (CCX). Those chiplets link to an IO die that houses the memory controller, PCI Express lanes, and other off-chip IO. The new 16-core Zen 2 chips also use the same AM4 socket and are compatible with the same motherboards, memory, and coolers currently on the market for lower core-count AMD Ryzen CPUs. Throughout all of Hot Hardware's benchmark testing, the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X consistently finished at or very near the top of the charts in every heavily-threaded workload, and handily took Intel's 18-core chip to task, beating it more often than not.
Cloud

Public Cloud Providers' Network Performance Wildly Varies (zdnet.com) 14

ThousandEyes, a cloud analysis company, in its second annual Cloud Performance Benchmark, has succeeded in measuring a major performance factor objectively: Public cloud providers' global network performance. ZDNet reports: In this study, ThousandEyes looked at the five major public cloud providers: Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. It did by analyzing over 320 million data points from 98 global metro locations over 30 days. This included measuring network performance from within the U.S. using multiple ISPs and global network measurements and by checking out speeds between availability zones (AZ)s and connectivity patterns between the cloud providers. Besides measuring raw speed, the company also looked at latency, jitter, and data loss.

First, ThousandEyes found some cloud providers rely heavily on the public internet to transport traffic instead of their backbones. This, needless to say, impacts performance predictability. During the evening Netflix internet traffic jam, if your cloud provider relies on the internet, you will see slowdowns in the evening. So, while Google Cloud and Azure rely heavily on their private backbone networks to transport their customer traffic, AWS and Alibaba Cloud rely heavily on the public internet for the majority of transport, IBM takes a hybrid approach that varies regionally.

What about AWS Global Accelerator? If you pay for this service, which puts your traffic on the AWS private backbone network, will you always see a better performance? Surprisingly, the answer's no. AWS doesn't always out-perform the internet. ThousandEyes found several cases, where the internet performs faster and more reliably than Global Accelerator -- or the results were negligible. For example, ThousandEyes discovered that from your headquarters in Seoul, you'd see a major latency improvement when accessing AWS US-East-1. That's great. But your office in San Francisco wouldn't see any improvement, while your group in Bangalore India would see a performance decrease. Generally speaking, Latin America and Asia have the highest performance variations across all clouds, whereas, in North America, cloud performance is generally comparable. You need to look at ThousandEye's detailed findings to pick out the best cloud provider on a per-region basis to ensure optimal performance. Regional performance differences can make a huge impact.
Additionally, the ISP you use and whether or not you're moving traffic in or out of China also affects cloud performance.

For more on the report, see ThousandEyes' website.
Android

Motorola Resurrects the Razr As a Foldable Android Smartphone (theverge.com) 77

After teasing it last month, Motorola has officially announced the successor to the Motorola Razr. The "razr," as it is called, "keeps the same general form factor but replaces the T9 keypad and small LCD with a 6.2-inch foldable plastic OLED panel and Android 9 Pie," reports The Verge. "It'll cost $1,499 when it arrives in January 2020." From the report: The new Razr is a fundamentally different take on the foldable phones that we've seen so far: instead of turning a modern-sized phone into a smaller tablet, it turns a conventional-sized smartphone into something much smaller and more pocketable. [...] The core of the phone is, of course, the display. It's a 6.2-inch 21:9 plastic OLED panel that folds in half along the horizontal axis. Unfolded, it's not dramatically bigger than any other modern phone, and the extra height is something that the Android interface and apps adapt to far better than a tablet-size screen. The screen does have a notch on top for a speaker and camera and a curved edge on the bottom, which takes a bit of getting used to, but after a minute or two, you barely notice it.

There's also a second, 2.7-inch glass-covered OLED display on the outside that Motorola calls the Quick View display. It can show notifications, music controls, and even a selfie camera mode to take advantage of the better main camera. Motorola is also working with Google to let apps seamlessly transition from the front display to the main one. There are some concerns about durability for the folding display, especially after Samsung's Galaxy Fold issues. But Motorola says that it has "full confidence in the durability of the Flex View display," claiming that its research shows that "it will last for the average lifespan of a smartphone." There's a proprietary coating to make the panel "scuff resistant," and it also has an internal nano-coating for splash resistance. (Don't take it swimming, though.) Motorola says that the entire display is made with a single cut, with the edges entirely enclosed by the stainless steel frame to prevent debris from getting in.
Aside from the mid-range specs, like the Snapdragon 710 processor and "lackluster" 16-megapixel camera, seasoned reviewers appear to really like the nostalgic look and feel of the device. Did you own a Razr phone from the mid-2000s? How do you think the new model compares?
Iphone

Apple Is Finally Willing To Make Gadgets Thicker So They Work Better (cnbc.com) 75

Apple has started to make its products thicker in an effort to give people what they want: functionality over form. This is a good thing. There are two recent examples: this year's iPhones and the new 16-inch MacBook Pro. Todd Haselton writes via CNBC: This is a theory, but it seems this may be that there are some design changes being made after the departure of Apple's former chief design officer Jony Ive. Ive was known for creating gorgeous products but, sometimes as we've seen with the older MacBook keyboard, perhaps at the cost of functionality. Form over function, as they say. [...] If you look back at the iPhone 8, for example, the phone measured just 7.3-mm thick, an example of Apple's seeming obsession with creating devices that were as thin as possible but often at the cost of battery life. But this year, Apple put a huge focus on battery life because it knows that's one of top things people want from their phones (along with great cameras). As a result of the larger battery, this year's iPhone 11 is slightly fatter at 8.3-mm thick. It's barely noticeable but shows that Apple knows people are willing to sacrifice on thinness for a phone that lasts all day.

Then there's the 16-inch MacBook Pro that was announced on Wednesday. It's less than 1-mm thicker than the 15-inch MacBook Pro that it replaces, and it weighs 4.3 pounds instead of 4 pounds in the prior model. It's 2% larger than the 15-inch MacBook Pro, too. All of this helps Apple include what people want in a similar but slightly bigger form factor: a keyboard with keys that you can actually tap into and that works, instead of one that's practically flat with very little key travel. The flat so-called butterfly keyboard was prone to exposure to dust and debris, which could lead to keys not registering or repeating themselves and, ultimately, lots of typos. Apple also focused on battery life in its new laptop. It lasts an hour longer than last year's model and charges fully in just 2.5 hours. That's partly because Apple was able to increase the battery size, something that likely contributed to the larger and heavier form factor.

Open Source

GitHub Places Open-Source Code In Arctic Cave For Safekeeping (bloomberg.com) 50

pacopico writes: GitHub's CEO Nat Friedman traveled to Svalbard in October to stash Linux, Android, and 6,000 other open-source projects in a permafrost-filled, abandoned coal mine. It's part of a project to safeguard the world's software from existential threats and also just to archive the code for posterity. As Friedman says, "If you told someone 20 years ago that in 2020, all of human civilization will depend on and run on open-source code written for free by volunteers in countries all around the world who don't know each other, and it'll just be downloaded and put into almost every product, I think people would say, 'That's crazy, that's never going to happen. Software is written by big, professional companies.' It's sort of a magical moment. Having a historical record of this will, I think, be valuable to future generations." GitHub plans to open several more vaults in other places around the world and to store any code that people want included.
AI

Boston Dynamics CEO on the Company's Top 3 Robots, AI, and Viral Videos (venturebeat.com) 6

In a rare interview, Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert talked about the three robots the company is currently focused on (today -- Spot, tomorrow -- Handle, and the future -- Atlas), its current customers, potential applications, AI, simulation, and of course those viral videos. An excerpt from the interview: "Today," for Raibert, refers to a time period that extends over the course of the next year or so. Spot is the "today" robot because it's already shipping to early adopters. In fact, it's only been shipping for about six weeks. Boston Dynamics wants Spot to be a platform -- Raibert has many times referred to it as "the Android of robots." Spot, which weighs about 60 pounds, "is not an end-use application robot," said Raibert. Users can add hardware payloads, and they can add software that interacts with Spot through its API. In fact, Raibert's main purpose in attending Web Summit was to inspire attendees to develop hardware and software for Spot. Boston Dynamics has an arm, spectrum radio, cameras, and lidars for Spot, but other companies are developing their own sensors. The "Spot" we're talking about is technically the SpotMini. It was renamed when it succeeded its older, bigger brother Spot. "The legacy Spot was a research project. We're really not doing anything with it at the moment. We just call it 'Spot' now; it's the product."

Spot can go up and down stairs by using obstacle detection cameras to see railings and steps. It also has an autonomous navigation system that lets it traverse a terrain. While Spot can be steered by a human, the computers onboard regulate the legs and balance. Spot travels at about 3 miles per hour, which is about human walking speed. It has cameras on its front, back, and sides that help it navigate, travel autonomously, and move omnidirectionally. It has different gaits (slow, walking, running, and even show-off), can turn in place, and has a "chicken head" mode. That last one means it can decouple the motion of its hand from its body, similar to how many animals can stabilize one part while the rest of the body moves.

Businesses

Dell Unveils Subscription Model To Counter Amazon, Microsoft (bloomberg.com) 29

Dell is planning to offer business clients a subscription model for products like servers and personal computers, "seeking to counter the lure of cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft," reports Bloomberg. From the report: Dell and its hardware peers have been under pressure to offer corporate clients the flexibility and simplicity of infrastructure cloud services. Public cloud titans such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have cut demand for data-center hardware as more businesses look to rent computing power rather than invest in their own server farms. Rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise said in June that it would move to a subscription model by 2022. Research firm Gartner predicts 15% of data-center hardware deals will include pay-per-use pricing in 2022, up from 1% in 2019, Dell said.

Dell is making it easier for clients to upgrade their hardware since they don't have to spend a large amount of capital expenditures upfront, but can pay a smaller amount each month that counts toward a company's operating expenditures. For the consumption programs, customers pay for the amount of storage or computing power they use. Companies can also hire Dell to completely manage their hardware infrastructure for them. While Dell's overall sales climbed 2% in the quarter that ended Aug. 2, demand for its servers and networking gear dropped 12% in a reversal from last year, when there was unprecedented customer interest in the products. Dell still expects the vast majority of customers to pay upfront for products in the next three to five years, Grocott said.

Medicine

UCLA Now Has the First Zero-Emission, All-Electric Mobile Surgical Instrument Lab 26

UCLA's new mobile surgical lab is a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle that will move back and forth between two UCLA campuses, collecting, sterilizing and repairing surgical instruments for the medical staff there. TechCrunch reports: Why is that even needed? The usual process is sending out surgical instruments for this kind of service by a third-party, and it's handled in a dedicated facility at a significant annual cost. UCLA Health Center estimates that it can save as much as $750,000 per year using the EV lab from Winnebago instead. The traveling lab can operate for around eight hours, including round-trips between the two hospital campuses, or for a total distance traveled of between 85 and 125 miles on a single charge of its battery, depending on usage. It also offers "the same level of performance, productivity and compliance" as a lab in a fixed-location building, according to Winnebago.

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