Everything you need to know about the M1 iMac |
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Happy Friday! Before you head out for the weekend, we've got some stories you should check out -- including a comprehensive guide to the new iMac, a primer on space lettuce, and an inside look at how USPS uses A.I. to find your missing mail. Enjoy! |
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Apple's new 24-inch iMac is a complete sea change in almost every way. If you are thinking of buying one, that means there are a lot of things to consider that did not factor into the old 21.5-inch model.
Not everything is different, though. No matter which version of the 24-inch iMac you buy, you get the same eight-core CPU integrated into the blazing-fast Apple M1 processor.
That's great news for simplicity, and its superb performance means even entry-level users get a sweet deal. You get the same high-quality 4.5K Retina display across every 24-inch iMac, too. For everything else, though, you need to make some choices. Here's what you need to know about how to configure your next iMac. |
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The United States Postal Service, or USPS, is relying on artificial intelligence-powered by Nvidia's EGX systems to track more than 100 million pieces of mail a day that goes through its network. The world's busiest postal service system is relying on GPU-accelerated A.I. systems to help solve the challenges of locating lost or missing packages and mail. Essentially, the USPS turned to A.I. to help it locate a "needle in a haystack."
To solve that challenge, USPS engineers created an edge A.I. system of servers that can scan and locate mail. They created algorithms for the system that were trained on 13 Nvidia DGX systems located at USPS data centers. Nvidia's DGX A100 systems, for reference, pack in five petaflops of compute power and cost just under $200,000. It is based on the same Ampere architecture found on Nvidia's consumer GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs.
The algorithms are then deployed and used on a network consisting of 195 distributed Apollo servers created by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with each server equipped with four Nvidia V100 GPUs. The result is a system called the Edge Computing Infrastructure Program, or ECIP, which tracks items for the postal service.
Combined with optical character recognition, these systems can locate missing mail that goes through the USPS network. In the past, it would take days to track down packages, but A.I.-powered technologies is reducing the manhunt for lost packages down to just mere hours. |
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SpaceX's recently returned Crew-1 astronauts have been sharing their experiences about their six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). During a news conference streamed live online on Thursday, May 6, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Soichi Noguchi of Japan's JAXA space agency, spent 30 minutes answering a range of questions about their time aboard the ISS as well as their experience of riding to and from the station in SpaceX's new Crew Dragon capsule.
Asked about the space gardening experiments on the ISS involving the cultivation of edible plants to see if such crops can be grown and consumed during future missions into deep space, Hopkins was clearly delighted at achieving multiple harvests of leafy greens during his time onboard the orbiting laboratory. "We created lettuce wraps at dinner that night and it was amazing, absolutely fantastic to have that fresh food."
Warming to his theme, Hopkins continued: "You'd float into that module where the crops were growing, and you could just smell it, and it smelled like the fresh produce section of your grocery store. There's something special about that — that connection to Earth that I think is pretty powerful." He added that he believed having fresh food in space is getting close to moving from an experimental phase to being the standard. |
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TIPS, TRICKS & TECHNIQUES |
We're all familiar with Siri by now. The famous intelligent voice assistant debuted in 2011 with the iPhone 4S, and since then Siri has appeared on pretty much every Apple device you care to name. To use Siri, you usually say "Hey Siri" near your Apple device, and the voice assistant will talk back to you.
The thing is, you may not necessarily like Siri's voice. Perhaps you'd like "her" to be a "him," or perhaps you want Siri to speak with a British accent. Either way, we explain in this article how to change Siri's voice, covering the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. We also explain how to change Siri's language, in case you want to speak to Apple's assistant in another tongue. |
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