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Parallel Domain’s API lets customers use generative AI to build synthetic datasets
Parallel Domain is putting the ability to generate synthetic datasets into the hands of its customers. The San Francisco-based startup has launched a new API called Data Lab that stands on the shoulders of generative AI giants, giving machine-learning engineers control over dynamic virtual worlds to simulate any scenario imaginable.
“All you have to do is you go to GitHub, you install the API, and then you can start writing Python code that generates datasets,” Kevin McNamara, founder and CEO of Parallel Domain, told TechCrunch.
Data Lab allows engineers to generate objects that weren’t previously available in the startup’s asset library. The API uses 3D simulation to provide a foundation upon which an engineer, through a series of simple prompts, can layer the real world in all its randomness on top. Want to train your model to drive on a highway with a cab flipped over across two lanes? Easy. Think your robotaxi should know how to identify a human dressed in an inflatable dinosaur outfit? Done.
The goal is to give autonomy, drone and robotics companies more control over and more efficiency in building large datasets so they can train their models quicker and at a deeper level.
“Iteration time now goes to essentially how fast can you, as an ML engineer, think of what you want and translate that into an API call, a set of code?” said McNamara. “There is a near infinite, unbounded level of stuff a customer could type in for a prompt, and the system just works.”
Parallel Domain counts major OEMs building advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving companies as customers. Historically, it might have taken weeks or months for the startup to create datasets based on a customer’s specific parameters. With the self-serve API, customers can form new datasets in “near real time,” according to McNamara.
On a larger scale, Data Lab could help scale autonomous driving systems even faster. McNamara said the startup tested certain AV models on synthetic datasets of strollers against real-world datasets of strollers, and found that the model performed better when trained on synthetic data.
While Parallel Domain isn’t using any of the open AI APIs that have gained popularity in recent months like ChatGPT, the startup is building components of its technology on top of the large foundation models that have been open sourced within the past couple of years.
“Things like Stable Diffusion enable us to fine tune our own versions of these foundation models and then use text input to drive the image and content generation,” said McNamara, noting that his team developed custom tech stacks to label objects as they generate.
Parallel Domain initially launched its synthetic data generation engine, called Reactor, in May for internal use and beta testing with trusted customers. Now that Reactor is being offered to customers through the Data Lab API, Parallel Domain’s business model will likely shift as customers prefer easy access to generative AI.
The startup’s commercial strategy today involves customers buying allotments of data and then using those credits throughout the year. Data Lab can help Parallel Domain move into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, where customers can subscribe to access to the platform and pay based on how much they use it, said McNamara.
The API also has the potential to help Parallel Domain scale into any space where computer vision-enabled technology is making industries more efficient, like agriculture, retail or manufacturing.
“AI enablement of agriculture is seen as one of the biggest things that will improve efficiency, and we want to go chase those use cases and eventually have a platform where no matter what domain you’re operating in, if you need to train an AI to see the world with some kind of sensor, the place you would start is Parallel Domain,” said McNamara.
Parallel Domain’s API lets customers use generative AI to build synthetic datasets by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch
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Reddit communities adopt alternative forms of protest as the company threats action on moderators
Multiple subreddits are adopting alternative methods of protesting like publishing only one kind of post, changing the topic in focus, and days when the community turns private.
A lot of these communities took part in the Reddit blackout from June 12-14 to rally against Reddit’s API rule changes, which could effectively kill a lot of third-party apps. As the company — and its CEO Steve Huffman — decided not to make any changes, subreddits started thinking about going dark indefinitely.
However, Reddit pointed out that moderators must keep the community open. Plus, they can’t decide that their community should go dark without a public vote. The company even sent messages to moderators saying that they will be removed if they all continue to particulate in the blackout.
To get around the moderator removal action, multiple communities are running polls to decide what type of posts are allowed on the subreddit. They are also relaxing some rules — because of the changes, moderators won’t have certain tools available to them, making their job more difficult.
Some of the biggest communities like r/pics, r/aww, and r/GIF decided to post John Oliver pictures and GIFs. In a tweet, Oliver approved this move.
In the case of r/aww, the community is also allowed to post pictures of Chiijohn. r/iPhone decided to post pictures celebrating “dashing” Tim Cook.
There are some truly bizarre forms of protest as well:
- r/Shitposting banned posts with the letter k.
- r/Wellthatsucks is now a subreddit about vacuum cleaners.
- r/Nofans is now a passive PC cooler subreddit.
- r/Interestingasfuck removed a lot of all rules apart from asking members to not break site-wide rules.
- r/Memes is allowing only Medieval / Landed Gentry memes. This is in response to Huffman’s “Landed Gentry” comment about protesting subreddits.
- r/PokemonGo is now allowing pictures of John Oliver, Pikachu, or Spark.
- r/Horny is now a “Christian Minecraft server.”
- r/Steam members are posting about actual steam.
- r/HarryPotter is now referring to Huffman as Voldemort.
- Some subreddits such as r/Showerthoughts are determining close days for the community.
While these methods are innovative and amusing, we’ll have to see if Reddit management shows any tendency to budge. In recent interviews, Huffman vehemently defended the company’s API rule changes and said that it wants to be profitable. He also suggested that these protests were spearheaded by a “small group that’s very upset” and it didn’t have any impact on the company’s revenues. Through these public votes, communities are trying to prove that a large number of people are unhappy with the changes made by Reddit.
If you are a subreddit moderator or Reddit employee who wants to talk about the ongoing situations, you can contact the reporter at im@ivanmehta.com.
Reddit communities adopt alternative forms of protest as the company threats action on moderators by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch
What happens to the smaller VC firms in a more conservative market?
Smaller venture funds are finding a way to manage in the midst of a conservative market.
As with all bear markets, the appetite for risk drops, and although emerging fund managers are often noted to outperform their more established counterparts, some limited partners are weary of bringing on new venture partners. Instead, they retreat to their trusted, established partners.
For some emerging managers, this means the market will become tougher to penetrate. For those with funds that are focused on backing diverse founders who are already working with less capital, the drawback is often the difference between another round or closing shop.
“Risk is also sometimes perceived as anything outside the status quo,” Madeline Darcy, a managing partner at Kaya Ventures, told TechCrunch+. “The pattern-matching we often speak about for founders and young hoodie-wearing Stanford drop-outs has an equivalent in the VC world in the form of spin-outs from large big-named funds who tend to have less diverse teams.”
B. Pagles Minor, a first-time fund manager who launched DVRGNT Ventures seven months ago, told TechCrunch+ the fundraising environment hasn’t necessarily been a walk in the park. They are seeing an increased emphasis on due diligence, with limited partners asking for more metrics and data than Minor expected. Some of these requests have been costly, too.
“For example, certain types of insurances that were not typical before are now being asked for, placing a financial burden on emerging managers who may struggle to afford them,” Minor said. Minor has also noticed a growing trend of limited partners asking to forgo certain management fees or asking for lower carry in the fund, adding more strain on a fund manager’s ability to build and operate the fund, they said.
What happens to the smaller VC firms in a more conservative market? by Dominic-Madori Davis originally published on TechCrunch
The Galaxy Z Fold 5 Features I Really Want to See – CNET
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Breville Joule Turbo review: sous vide with speed
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India’s Byju’s to cut up to 1,000 more jobs
Byju’s is cutting 500 to 1,000 more jobs at the firm, this time eliminating several non-sales roles as well, as the Indian edtech giant pushes to improve its finances, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which has cut over 3,000 jobs in the past one year, declined to comment.
The new wave of layoff is aimed at improving the finances, the person familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity discussing nonpublic matters.
India’s Byju’s to cut up to 1,000 more jobs by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch
Let’s demystify the life-changing physics of electricity
To the uninitiated, electricity might seem like a sort of hidden magic. It plays by laws of physics we can’t necessarily perceive with our eyes.
But most of our lives run on electricity. Anyone who has ever lived through a power outage knows how inconvenient it is. On a broader level, it’s hard to understate just how vital the flow of electricity is to powering the functions of modern society.
“If I lose electricity, I lose telecommunications. I lose the financial sector. I lose water treatment. I can’t milk the cows. I can’t refrigerate food,” says Mark Petri, an electrical grid researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
[Related: How to save electricity this summer]
Which makes it all the more important to know how electricity works, where it comes from, and how it gets to our homes.
How does electricity work?
The universe as we know it is governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force (which holds subatomic particles together inside atoms), the weak nuclear force (which guides some types of radioactivity), gravity, and electromagnetism (which governs the intrinsically linked concepts of electricity and magnetism).
One of electromagnetism’s key tenets is that the subatomic particles that make up the cosmos can have either a positive or negative charge. To use them as a form of energy, we have to make them flow as electric current. The electricity we have on Earth is mostly from the movement of negatively charged electrons.
But it takes more than a charge to keep electrons flowing. The particles don’t travel far before they run into an obstacle, such as a neighboring atom. That means electricity needs a material whose atoms have loose electrons, which can be knocked away to conduct keep the current going. This type of material is known as a conductor. Most metals have conductive qualities, such as the copper that forms a lot of electrical wires.
Other materials, called insulators, have far more tightly bound electrons that aren’t easily pushed around. The plastic that coats most wires is an insulator, which is why you don’t get a nasty shock when you touch a cord or plug.
Some scientists and engineers think of electricity as a bit like water streaming through a pipe. The volume of water passing through a pipe section at a given time compares to the number of electrons flowing through a particular strand of wire, which scientists measure in amps. The water pressure that helps to push the fluid through is like the electrical voltage. When you multiply amps by volts, you compute the power or the amount of energy passing through the wire every second, which electricians measure in watts. The wattage of your microwave, then, is approximately the amount of electrical energy it uses per second.
How electrons carry voltage through wires
Based on the law of electromagnetism, if a wire is caught in a magnetic field and that magnetic field shifts, it induces an electric current in the wire. This is why most of the world’s electricity is born from generators, which are typically rotating magnetic apparatuses. As a generator spins, it sends electricity shooting through a wire coiled around it.
[Related: The best electric generators for your home]
Powering a whole city calls for a colossal generator, potentially the size of a building. But it takes energy to make energy from that generator. In most fossil fuel and nuclear plants, the fuel source boils water into steam, which causes turbines to spin their respective generators. Hydro and wind generators take advantage of nature’s own motion, redirecting water or gusts of wind to do the spinning. Solar panels, meanwhile, work differently because they don’t need moving magnets at all. When light strikes a solar cell, it excites the electrons within the atoms of the material, causing them to flow out in a current.
It’s easier to transfer energy with lots of volts and fewer amps. As such, long-distance power lines use thousands of volts to carry electricity away from power plants. That’s far too high for most buildings, so power grids rely on substations to lower the voltage for regular outlets and home electronics. North American buildings typically set their voltage to 120 volts; most of the rest of the world uses between 220 and 240 volts.
Current also doesn’t flow one way—instead, it constantly switches direction back and forth, which engineers call alternating current. This enables it to travel stretches of up to several thousands of miles. North American wires flip from one current direction to the other 60 times every second. In other parts of the globe, particularly in Europe and Africa, they alternate back and forth 50 times every second.
That brings the current to your building’s breaker box. But how does that power actually get to your electronic devices?
[Related: Why you need an uninterruptible power supply]
To keep a continuous flow of electricity, a system needs a complete circuit. Buildings everywhere are wired with incomplete circuits. A two-hole socket contains one “live” wire and one “neutral” wire. When you plug in a lamp, kitchen appliance, or phone charger, you’re completing that circuit, allowing electricity to flow from the live wire, through the device, and back through the neutral wire to deliver energy.
Put another way, if you stick a finger into a live socket, you’re temporarily completing the circuit with your body (somewhat painfully).
The future of electricity
Not long ago, electricity was still a luxury. In the late 1990s, nearly one-third of the world’s population lived in homes without electrical access. We’ve since cut that proportion by more than half—but nearly a billion people, mainly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, still don’t have a current.
Historically, almost all electricity started at large power plants and ended at homes and businesses. But the transition to renewable energy is altering that process. On average, solar and wind farms are smaller than hulking coal plants and dams. On rainy and calm days, giant batteries can back them up with stored power.
“What we have been seeing, and what we can expect to see in the future, is a major evolution of the grid,” says Petri.
[Related: Why hasn’t Henry Ford’s power grid become a reality?]
The infrastructure we build around electricity makes a difference, both for the health of the planet and people. In 2020, only 39 percent of the world’s electricity came from clean sources like nuclear and hydro, compared to CO2-emitting fossil fuels.
Fortunately, there is plenty of reason for optimism. By some accounts, solar power is now the cheapest energy source in human history, with wind power not far behind. Moreover, a growing number of utility users are installing rooftop solar panels, solar generators, heat pumps, and the like. “People’s homes are not just taking power from the grid,” says Petri. “They’re putting power back on the grid. It’s a much more complex system.”
The laws of electricity don’t change depending on where we choose to draw our current from. But the consequences of our decisions on how to use that power do matter.
The post Let’s demystify the life-changing physics of electricity appeared first on Popular Science.
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