Palm

For the past two months, anybody wanting to try out Google's new chatbot AI, Bard, had to first register their interest and join a waitlist before being granted access. On Wednesday, the company announced that those days are over. Bard will immediately be dropping the waitlist requirement as it expands to 180 additional countries and territories. What's more, this expanded Bard will be built atop Google's newest Large Language Model, PaLM 2, making it more capable than ever before. Google hurriedly released the first…

Google has been heavily investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the company’s focus on this area is expected to continue at its annual developer conference- Google I/O 2023. According to a CNBC report, the company is set to several AI-related announcements, including updates to its existing AI technologies and products and a general-use large language model called PaLM-2. PaLM-2, which stands for “Pathways Language Model,” is a next-generation language model that is expected to outperform its predecessor, PaLM.…

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Monday, April 24.After decades in the shadows of history, the city of Palm Springs’ role in the organized dismantling of the multiethnic, low-income community known as Section 14 has received considerable desert sunlight in recent years.Now, the families who lived on the land and their descendants are moving forward in their quest for racial justice.The Palm Springs City Council is set to vote this week on a plan to hire a reparations consulting group…

Shoppers at 11 Whole Foods Market stores throughout the Denver area can now pay at check out with just the wave of a palm. The supermarket chain recently introduced Amazon One: a service that lets patrons enroll their palms, then link their debit or credit cards to them. Afterward, there’s no need to pay with cash or cards –  shoppers just hold their palms over the device, then they’ve bought their groceries. The stores implementing the new option include: Belmar Cherry Creek Colfax Colorado Boulevard Governor’s Ranch…

At first, Joe Abner would come home from school and find a single house on fire. A vacant house, toppled by a bulldozer and set ablaze by Palm Springs city firemen.Then two houses would be burning. ”Then it got to the point when you saw smoke, you were pretty well freaked out because you didn’t know if it was your house or one of your neighbors’ houses,” Abner said. “They were tearing houses down right in front of your face.”Now 72, Abner was 13 when his family fled Section 14 in Palm Springs, leaving the home his father…

There was a time when Burnaby Mountain, and the areas around it along B.C.'s south coast, was a warmer, less mountainous region where palm trees grew, according to new research that identified plant fossils unearthed at the site more than 50 years ago. When Simon Fraser University was being built in the late 1960s, paleobotanist Rolf Mathewes was an undergraduate, and he helped gather dozens of plant fossils at a deposit exposed by the construction site. The fossils date back to around 40 million years ago.SFU then locked…

Fat droplets in the fat cell of a mouse: The membrane of the droplets was stained green, and the fat stored in them was stained red. Credit: Johanna Spandl / University of BonnThe study offers the first precise understanding of crucial remodeling processes in adipose tissue.Fat cells utilize fat molecules as a means of energy storage. These molecules are comprised of three fatty acids attached to a glycerol backbone, and are commonly referred to as triglycerides. It has been long believed that these molecules undergo…

The coming age of powerful AI chatbots may very well reshape the world in radical and unforeseen ways, but it could do so at an immense environmental cost. A new report released today by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence estimates the amount of energy needed to train AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-3, which powers the world-famous ChatGPT, could power an average American’s home for hundreds of years. Of the three AI models reviewed in the research, OpenAI’s system was by far the most energy…

After facing criticism about his ChatGPT rival called Bard, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said that the company will soon release more capable AI models.Bard was released for the public on March 21 but failed to garner the attention won by OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing chatbot."We clearly have more capable models. Pretty soon, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable Pathways Language Model (PaLM) models, which will bring more capabilities; be it in reasoning, coding, it can answer maths…

If there’s any piece of technology that has made a significant impact on the lives of everyone, it’s the cellular phone —  specifically, the smartphone. It’s literally a tiny computer that fits into your pocket, and brings a plethora of information, entertainment, and lets you capture visual memories or be productive wherever you go. Pretty much everyone has a smartphone these days, for better or for worse. But have you ever thought about which smartphones have been the most important and influential ones that shaped…