Posts Tagged: large
Hyundai says it’s the first to pilot a large autonomous ship across the ocean
Autonomous ships just took a small but important step forward. Hyundai's Avikus subsidiary says it has completed the world's first autonomous navigation of a large ship across the ocean. The Prism Courage (pictured) left Freeport in the Gulf of Mexico on May 1st, and used Avikus' AI-powered HiNAS 2.0 system to steer the vessel for half of its roughly 12,427-mile journey to the Boryeong LNG Terminal in South Korea's western Chungcheong Province. The Level 2 self-steering tech was good enough to account for other ships, the weather and differing wave heights.
The autonomy spared the crew some work, of course, but it may also have helped the planet. Avikus claims HiNAS' optimal route planning improved the Prism Courage's fuel efficiency by about seven percent, and reduced emissions by five percent.
As you might have guessed, the feat didn't quite usher in an era of zero-crew shipping. The other half of the trip still required human navigation, and most of the route was in the open sea. It would have been tougher for an autonomous system to control the entire voyage, particularly in ports where docking and packed waterways would pose additional challenges.
Avikus plans to commercialize HiNAS 2.0 by the end of the year. And even if fully AI-driven shipping is nowhere on the horizon, the company hopes its Level 2 autonomy will mitigate crew shortages, improve safety and reduce the environmental impact of seaborne transportation. The firm also expects to bring this navigation to leisure boats, not just giant merchant ships. Your next pleasure ride aboard a cabin cruiser or yacht might not always require someone at the helm.
Amazon explains outage that took out a large chunk of the internet
Amazon has explained the Web Services outage that knocked parts of the internet offline for several hours on December 7th — and promised more clarity if this happens in the future. As CNBCreports, Amazon revealed an automated capacity scaling feature led to "unexpected behavior" from internal network clients. Devices connecting that internal network to AWS were swamped, stalling communications.
The nature of the failure prevented teams from pinpointing and fixing the problem, Amazon added. They had to use logs to find out what happened, and internal tools were also affected. The rescuers were "extremely deliberate" in restoring service to avoid breaking still-functional workloads, and had to contend with a "latent issue" that prevented networking clients from backing off and giving systems a chance to recover.
The AWS division has temporarily disabled the scaling that led to the problem, and won't switch it back on until there are solutions in place. A fix for the latent glitch is coming within two weeks, Amazon said. There's also an extra network configuration to shield devices in the event of a repeat failure.
You might have an easier time understanding crises the next time around. A new version of AWS' service status dashboard is due in early 2022 to provide a clearer view of any outages, and a multi-region support system will help Amazon get in touch with customers that much sooner. These won't bring AWS back any faster during an incident, but they may eliminate some of the mystery when services go dark — important when victims include everything from Disney+ to Roomba vacuums.
Russia demands large tech companies set up local offices by 2022
Russia is getting serious with demands that foreign tech companies set up shop within its borders. Reuterssays the country's telecom regulator Roskomnadzor has called on 13 foreign and mostly American companies to launch official Russian presences by 2022 so they can comply with a law that took effect July 1st. The list includes familiar tech names like Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook), Telegram, TikTok and Twitter.
The law demands local offices for "internet companies" with over 500,000 daily users. Some of the companies already have offices, though, and it's unclear just what constitutes an official presence. Those deemed violating the law could be subject to either complete bans or limits on their ads, data gathering and money transfers.
As you might have guessed, the concern is that Russia might use the law to wield more control over those companies and their content. Russia has clashed with Apple multiple times, for instance, including a fine for allegedly abusing App Store dominance — this law might give officials more leverage. The move might also help Russia pressure companies into censoring content the government deems objectionable, such as social media posts backing the political opposition to Putin's regime.
The announcement makes a tricky situation that much more difficult. Russia is a significant market some companies can't always afford to lose but honoring the request could also mean enabling censorship and other rights abuses. Companies may soon have to make decisions that are painful regardless of the outcome.
Magnetic FreeBOT orbs work together to climb large obstacles
We’ve seen both companies and research teams attempt to make modular robots an everyday reality, but, more often than not, they all run into the same problem: the mechanism that allows those devices to connect to each other is complicated and fragile…
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Xiaomi may be ending their large Mi Max and Mi Note series
Xiaomi maintains a huge product catalogue across the market, however they may be removing their size-focused ranges, likely because size is not a defining factor anymore. Amongst their huge array of devices and product lines, Xiaomi has maintained their ‘Max‘ and ‘Note‘ series as sub-segments of their flagship ‘Mi‘ brand which both focus on size […]
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First ‘State of Decay 2’ patch is as large as the game itself
If you have State of Decay 2 but haven't fired it up in a while, you'll have to be… patient. Undead Labs has released its first patch for the zombie-slaying title, and it's a whopping 20GB — that's about as large as the install on the Xbox One….
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Steam will support VR in very large rooms
If you want to play a room-scale VR game using Steam's current tracking method, you need to do it in a 13-by-13 foot area. That's fine for your living room, but what if you want more space? Don't fret: Valve has announced that SteamVR Tracking 2.0 wi…
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Apple Watch surpasses all other wearables by a large margin, according to report
The Apple Watch is the hottest wearable by a country mile, according to a new report that claims 75 percent of wearable sales were Apple branded. Samsung took second place in the battle, and analysts claim it will receive a large boost from the Gear S2 launch.
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