The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1939, upon arriving late to his statistics course at UC Berkeley, George Dantzig—a first-year graduate student—copied two problems off the blackboard, thinking they were a homework assignment. He found the homework “harder to do than usual,” he would later recount, and apologized to the…
Our leaf blower testing process starts well before the actual tests, when we rope off a swath of grass and dump the same amount of leaves inside the boundary for every model. To have a reliable pile before every fall for the newest models, we usually start collecting our leaves a year or more ahead…
Manisha Krishnan: OK. So it sounds like you’re potentially open. You’re not closing the door on working with AI basically? Jon Chu: I don’t know. Manisha Krishnan: OK. That’s fair. I do want to talk a little bit about Crazy Rich Asians because I love that movie, but also I sort of wonder, did you…
You could do as I do and eat it standing up at the sink right out of the tin, but there are plenty of more glamorous, or at least dignified, ways to eat tinned seafood, too. If you’re a tinned seafood newbie, Dan Waber of Rainbow Tomatoes Garden recommends starting out with sprats, also known…
“Is he super important and this is the first I’m hearing of him?” one asked. “Is it a superfan polyglot who wants everyone to know about his favourite writer/composer? Is it someone using AI to artificially boost this guy’s performance metrics?” The Investigation A Wikipedia editor who goes by “Grnrchst” recently decided to find out,…
Monthly bill: $85 to $110 per month What you get: Fubo is a sports-centric service that provides live and on-demand channels from ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC in most markets. It recently raised prices by $5 a month. You also get cable channels (AMC, Bravo, Discovery, FX, HGTV, Syfy, and TLC) and sports networks (BeIn…
Other Phones to Consider We test a ton of Android phones. We like the ones below, but you’ll be better off with one of the options above. If you haven’t yet done so, check out our Best Cheap Phones and Best Folding Phones guides for more. Pixel 9 Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Google Pixel 9 for…
Every day, the average adult in the U.S. uses 12 personal care products—such as moisturizers, sunscreens, and cosmetics—containing 112 unique ingredients, some of which are linked to cancer, reproductive harm, and other health risks. Under current law, companies that make these products can use almost any ingredient without premarket testing or review. In fact, the…
Buying bath towels can be surprisingly confusing if you want to know exactly what you’re paying for. There’s a fair amount of terminology; understanding these terms can help you see past the marketing hype and make a more sound purchase. MaterialsYou’ll find bath towels made either with 100 percent cotton, or a mixture of cotton…
The real question is how effectively AgiBot’s algorithms can teach its robots new tricks. Using reinforcement learning to teach a robot tasks that require improvisation generally requires a lot of training data, and studies show it cannot be perfected entirely inside a simulation. AgiBot speeds up the learning process by having a human worker guide…