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Velká zvířata vymírala vždy. Ostatně i ta malá. Vymizení megafauny před cca 50 tisíci let bylo ale úplně jiné. Za posledních 66 milionů let se nestalo tak divné a selektivní vymírání velkých druhů, přestože klima skáče jako splašená koza prakticky neustále. Všechno ukazuje na jediného podezřelého. Miluje maso.

Činorodá DARPA a společnost Northrop Grumman staví velmi utajovaný dron XRQ-73 SHEPARD, který by měl být jako stvořený pro stealth průzkumné mise dalekého dosahu. Má hybridní pohon, což zajistí jak podstatně delších dolet než u čistě elektrických dronů, tak i velmi tichý let. Premiéru ve vzduchu by měl mít už letos.

V souvislosti s boomem v segmentu umělé inteligence se Nvidia dostala do hledáčku francouzských úřadů, které ji podezřívají z monopolních praktik při prosazování svých AI akcelerátorů…

News that VMware’s former End User Computing (EUC) division is now officially called Omnissa — and that reference to the former was mentioned only in a footnote in the firm’s press release — is not surprising at all, said Shannon Kalvar, research director of virtual client computing at IDC.

Yesterday marked the official launch of the new organization, now owned by Menlo Park, Calif.-based KKR. The global investment firm paid $4 billion for VMware’s EUC division in a deal announced in late February, only a few months after Broadcom’s $69 billion acquisition of VMware was finalized. The EUC division purchase included Horizon, a desktop and application virtualization platform, and Workspace One, a unified endpoint management platform for the enterprise.

Instead of dwelling on the past, the Omnissa executive team, which includes Shankar Iyer as the firm’s CEO and who formerly headed up the VMware EUC division, has an opportunity to “come out and really lay out a vision for end user computing in an era where companies are increasingly very much digital and becoming AI driven,” Kalvar said.

“By that, I don’t mean all the excitement about LLMs,” he added. “But there have been tremendous advancements in hundreds of different kinds of models for predictive and interpreted analytics, for all kinds of things,” he said.

There is, he said, also an opportunity to say, “OK, we are stable now, but we can go further, we can do more.”

John Annand, practice lead at Info-Tech Research Group, said that as “Broadcom has continued its attempts to mend fences following the acquisition of VMware, we now finally know the outcome of the division they did not want to take into the new partnership.”

Annand described Omnissa as a company that is “aggressively looking to retain the former VMware client base by appealing to the goodwill VMware used to have in both the enterprise and reseller partner space. Senior staff in operations, engineering, marketing, product, and, of course, the new CEO, Shankar Iyer, are all familiar faces for those who took the EUC track at past VMWorld conferences.”

Combine these staff choices, he said, with the “vision and value statements, and the messaging seems clear: ‘We will be the company you used to like doing business with.’”

Omnissa is “wasting no time reaching out to industry analysts to schedule briefings and invite us to attend their Omnissa Live conference” on July 23, Annand said.

“I imagine over the next 20 days, in the lead-up to their conference, we’ll begin to get a sense of their partner program and pricing models. Certainly, these are topics that are foremost on the minds of former VMware customers. And whatever goodwill Omnissa hopes to retain will depend on a large part of how they respond to these questions.” 

Position-wise, said Annand, “this is a great time for them, and it makes a lot of sense for them to move quickly. Citrix recently had to go back to the well in order to raise some more cash and is aggressively ‘evaluating’ its customer portfolio, which is to say focusing on strategic ones at the expense of nonstrategic ones. And while Microsoft continues to reimagine what an entirely cloud-native desktop experience might look like, enterprises need solutions that work with existing software and devices today and not just into the future.”

Annand added that the need for desktop and app virtualization, as well as end-user device management, “has not gone away by any means. Zero-trust and security requirements across all the different form factors, manufacturers, and operating systems we put in front of workers these days have exponentially increased the operational complexity of enterprise IT.”

The challenge for Omnissa will be, he said, “do they bring the same bag of well-rehearsed tricks to the party, or can they, without legacy VMware hanging around their necks, do something truly innovative? If not, then at least we’ll have some competition as Microsoft continues to win the EUC space by default.”

Forrester principal analyst Naveen Chhabra noted in an email, “Companies that use VMware EUC products and plan to continue to do so will have to deal with Omnissa for continued support unless they need no more vendor support. Support is critical for most large organizations for functionality, performance, and security reasons.”

Chhabra noted that VMware customers have had to navigate a lot of change, first adjusting to the Broadcom acquisition and then to EUC division’s sale to KKR. And they’re not done yet.

“Omnissa is a new company, new leadership. Clients will have to learn how to work with a new company, new policies, new roadmap, new licensing,” he said. “So it is not going to be as easy or straightforward as one may want or like. There are credible alternatives from vendors like HCL, Microsoft, IBM, and Ivanti, but, as always, transition/migration is not going to be pain-free.”

China aims to be among the first countries to begin developing standards for the future of brain-computer interfaces with the establishment of a new technical committee by its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology specifically for this purpose.

The ministry’s Brain-Computer Interface Standardization Technical Committee is currently fielding opinions and ideas on various issues associated with the technology and standards that the country already has set for its development, according to a press release published online by the Ministry.

These include developing and revising basic standards not only for the technology’s technical aspects, but also to hammer out issues around ethics and safety — which become increasingly more critical as technology that pushes boundaries for human-machine interaction advance.

The newly formed standards committee is currently soliciting comments regarding topics such as the “typical paradigms” of brain-computer interfaces; input and output interfaces such as brain information collection and preprocessing; and brain information encoding and decoding, data communication, and data visualization.

It’s also formulating and revising technical standards and test specifications for brain-computer interfaces in various fields, including medical, health, education, industry, and consumer electronics. It also will consider ethics and safety aspects such as the safety of emerging interface systems, as well as clinical applications of them.

Organizing standards leadership

Overall, the standards effort will attempt to create some kind of organization around stakeholders involved in China’s domestic brain-computer interface industry, including those in academia, research, and the tech industry itself.

The ultimate goals are “to focus on the hot spots of the industry and the needs of industry development, accelerate the research on the roadmap for the standardization of brain-computer interfaces, clarify the key directions and research and development priorities of brain-computer interface standardization, and coordinate and promote the formulation of brain-computer interface standards,” according to the release.

People have until July 30 to share their comments with the Science and Technology Department of the Ministry during the public announcement period.

The move supports China’s previously revealed three-year plan to establish itself as a global leader in computing standards, particularly for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. China is vying to strengthen its position in its ongoing technology race with the US and other nations taking the lead in tech that’s pushing the boundaries of how humans interact with machines.

Ethics to play a key role

While many technology standards efforts focus on interoperability, stewards for technologies such as AI and brain-computer interfaces — which push the boundaries of human-machine interaction — have a more pressing set of concerns, noted Brad Shimmin, chief analyst, AI & Data Analytics at Omdia. China’s new committee and groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in the US that seek to clarify these emerging standards will need to put ethical and safety considerations at the forefront of their agendas, he said.

“These organizations will be tasked with the difficult task of providing ethical guidance, providing a sustainable foundation upon which innovators can build solutions, as well as placing constraints on research and experimentation,” Shimmin said. “Such efforts can help to accelerate innovation while also ensuring that funded research conforms to the current socio-political expectations of the host country.”

Even with standards bodies such as the IEEE, the United States has historically encouraged aggressive research and experimentation with new technologies — up to a point, Shimmin noted. In the US, for example, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink is currently in human trials with its surgically implanted brain chip, though it hit a snag this week when the second patient who was to receive the chip bowed out for medical reasons. As these trials evolve, however, organizations like the National Institutes of Health will continue to collaborate with lawmakers so they can step in to limit potentially dangerous research, he said.

Still, countries that can take a lead on the standardization of methods, interface mechanics, or materials used in creating human brain-computer interfaces, as well as the consideration of ethical issues, can “fuel national pride” that in turn drives investment in innovation and an influence on the global stage, Shimmin noted.

“Any country able to set the tone for highly impactful areas of innovation … can to a great degree shape the future of influence in that market, drawing in talented researchers and investors,” he said.

Still, no matter what standards bodies decide about human brain-computer interfaces, the pace of the technology will likely move very slowly — at least in the US, given that any meaningful use or market application will have to be approved by medical and healthcare regulators, experts said. This may give China’s standards efforts an edge if they are not limited by such a rigorous approval structure. 

Related reading:

• This computer makes it possible for paralyzed patients to communicate
• Researcher sends thoughts over Internet, moves colleague’s hand: Human-to-human brain interface
• Japan lab claims its software can read dreams

Recently patched vulnerabilities in a software dependency management tool used by developers of applications for Apple’s iOS and MacOS platforms, could have opened the door for attackers to insert malicious code into many of the most popular apps on those platforms.

One particular security weakness in the CocoaPods dependency manager created a mechanism for hackers to launch supply chain attacks, security researchers at EVA Information Security warned Monday.

Developers who relied on CocoaPods over recent years should verify the integrity of open source dependencies in their code in response to these security weaknesses, EVA advised.

CocoaPods is an open-source dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C projects. Software developers use the technology to verify the integrity and authenticity of the components they’re using by ensuring the checksums and digital signatures of packages are all present and correct.

Získejte děti pro techniku a programování • Anebo se sami naučte kódovat a prototypovat • Vybrali jsme stavebnice a roboty pro malé caparty i budoucí experty

Lidé zkouší různé věci, třeba bootovat Linux z Google Drive.

V červenci začíná americká hurikánová sezóna. Je tady každý rok, tak proč se vzrušovat hurikánem Beryl, který postupuje Karibským mořem a míří směrem na Jamajku? Tohle totiž není jen obyčejná tropická bouře. V červenci? Představte si, že byste v tuhle dobu čekali příjemné letní počasí, možná ...

Loni se Opera vytasila s modulárním designem, automatickým seskupováním webů a chatbotem Aria. Formálně se přejmenovala na Opera One. Vývojový tým teď předvádí další inovační vlnu. Kódové označení projektu je Opera One R2. Slibuje inovace ve třech oblastech: umělá inteligence, správa karet a ...

Beyond Intelligence, India is another ‘I’ Apple is making big investments in, and the scale of its journey there becomes easier to see every single day. It’s a commitment that goes OS deep.

I say that because Apple has woven eight India-focused enhancements within iOS 18, which shows how the company is focused on building its reach into the nation’s smartphone market.

The market isn’t the only thing it wants to build in India. Manufacturing there is also on the rise — and Apple and its manufacturing partners are actually growing their business there even faster than they agreed with India’s government in the first place.

Designed in California, Made in India

Apple has three manufacturing partners in India: Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tata Electronics. All three are in receipt of various forms of support under India’s PLI scheme, which aims to bring more technology manufacturing to India. Under the scheme, manufacturers must agree to meet certain production targets to qualify for that help. 

Apple’s iPhone partners have massively exceeded those agreed targets, with production reaching levels 45% higher than was agreed. 

Apple’s iPhone sales are also increasing, reaching 10 million in 2023, up from six million the previous year. That gives the company 23% of India’s smartphone revenue share. 

In tandem with Apple’s other consumer-facing initiatives in India, including high street Apple retail stores and various developer education offerings, the company does seem to be successfully stimulating business there.

What else can it do?

India inside your iPhones

Localization isn’t just a good thing to do, it’s also the right thing to do. People recognize when a company has gone the extra mile to make products or services that are relevant to them. Believe it or not, the world is not one vast monoculture, but a medley of many, who at their best rub alongside each other. 

Recognizing this, it matters that Apple in iOS 18 will introduce numerous enhancements designed to reach India’s consumers. It’s a big message that tells India’s consumers the company remains seriously committed to doing business there, and will no doubt help it further improve those all important customer satisfaction levels upon which the company builds so much, from services to app and accessory sales.

That constant reaching out to the target market is typical of Apple. (Though not always consistent — for example, I do wish the company would introduce European Portuguese language support and do not understand why it has not.)

Ultimately, Apple knows that if you reach out effectively, you build business for tomorrow. That’s implicit across the company’s entire approach to its business, even to the extent of, for example, the high-quality design of the headbands on Vision Pro. That doesn’t necessarily mean its products are the most affordable but does mean it has a great reputation for being the best.

Bottom line? Additional iOS localization in India will help Apple spread its gospel in this strategically important market, creating stronger foundations for development there. It’s focus and investment that gave Apple its highest ever iPhone sales in India last year. 

iOS 18 gets ready for India

So, what has Apple added to its iPhone OS? A wave of improvements that represent the company’s growing understanding of the needs of that market:

• You will be able to customize the Lock Screen’s time display using Indian numerals from 12 of the nation’s languages, including Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki, and Telugu.
• If your carrier supports it, Live Voicemail transcription will be available in Indian English.
• The multilingual keyboard will support English and up to two additional Indian languages, including Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. 
• Different keyboard alphabetical layouts will be available in 11 Indian languages (Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu).
• Language search will be improved with the addition of select Indian languages.
• Siri will support nine Indian languages in addition to Indian English. That means you’ll be able to interact in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.
• The Translate app will support Hindi, and that support extends to translation in Safari, Notes, and elsewhere across the OS.

A thoughtful strategy

The journey from Apple’s entry to India to now has been a very long road. Along the way, the company has demonstrated a brilliant strategy that should be part of the playbook for any firm seeking to access new markets. It’s so simple to articulate, and so complex to do. It works like this:

• Every market is different. Engage with new markets on their own terms.
• Invest selflessly. That new factory you spend millions on will build its own rewards in terms of local employment and consumer loyalty.
• Meet people where they are.
• Iterate and improve over time.

Apple’s successful execution of this approach is precisely why India is set to become Apple’s third biggest market.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Imagine a future with nearly silent air taxis flying above traffic jams and navigating between skyscrapers and suburban droneports. Transportation arrives at the touch of your smartphone and with minimal environmental impact.

This isn’t just science fiction. United Airlines has plans for these futuristic electric air taxis in Chicago and New York. The US military is already experimenting with them. And one company has a contract to launch an air taxi service in Dubai as early as 2025. Another company hopes to defy expectations and fly participants at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Backed by billions of dollars in venture capital and established aerospace giants that include Boeing and Airbus, startups across the world such as Joby, Archer, Wisk, and Lilium are spearheading this technological revolution, developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that could transform the way we travel.

Electric aviation promises to alleviate urban congestion, open up rural areas to emergency deliveries, slash carbon emissions, and offer a quieter, more accessible form of short-distance air travel.

But the quest to make these electric aircraft ubiquitous across the globe instead of just playthings for the rich is far from a given. Following the industry as executive director of the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education provides a view of the state of the industry. Like all great promised paradigm shifts, numerous challenges loom—technical hurdles, regulatory mazes, the crucial battle for public acceptance, and perhaps physics itself.

Why Electrify Aviation?

Fixed somewhere between George Jetson’s flying car and the gritty taxi from The Fifth Element, the allure of electric aviation extends beyond gee-whiz novelty. It is rooted in its potential to offer efficient, eco-friendly alternatives to ground transportation, particularly in congested cities or hard-to-reach rural regions.

While small electric planes are already flying in a few countries, eVTOLs are designed for shorter hops—the kind a helicopter might make today, only more cheaply and with less impact on the environment. The eVTOL maker Joby purchased Uber Air to someday pair the company’s air taxis with Uber’s ride-hailing technology.

In the near term, once eVTOLs are certified to fly as commercial operations, they are likely to serve specific, high-demand routes that bypass road traffic. An example is United Airlines’ plan to test Archer’s eVTOLs on short hops from Chicago to O’Hare International Airport and Manhattan to Newark Liberty International Airport.

While some applications initially might be restricted to military or emergency use, the goal of the industry is widespread civil adoption, marking a significant step toward a future of cleaner urban mobility.

The Challenge of Battery Physics

One of the most significant technical challenges facing electric air taxis is the limitations of current battery technology.

Today’s batteries have made significant advances in the past decade, but they don’t match the energy density of traditional hydrocarbon fuels currently used in aircraft. This shortcoming means that electric air taxis cannot yet achieve the same range as their fossil-fueled counterparts, limiting their operational scope and viability for long-haul flights. Current capabilities still fall short of traditional transportation. However, with ranges from dozens of miles to over 100 miles, eVTOL batteries provide sufficient range for intracity hops.

The quest for batteries that offer higher energy densities, faster charging times, and longer life cycles is central to unlocking the full potential of electric aviation.

While researchers are working to close this gap, hydrogen presents a promising alternative, boasting a higher energy density and emitting only water vapor. However, hydrogen’s potential is tempered by significant hurdles related to safe storage and infrastructure capable of supporting hydrogen-fueled aviation. That presents a complex and expensive logistics challenge.

And, of course, there’s the specter of the last major hydrogen-powered aircraft. The Hindenburg airship caught fire in 1937, but it still looms large in the minds of many Americans.

Regulatory Hurdles

Establishing a “4D highways in the sky” will require comprehensive rules that encompass everything from vehicle safety to air traffic management. For the time being, the US Federal Aviation Administration is requiring that air taxis include pilots serving in a traditional role. This underscores the transitional phase of integrating these vehicles into airspace, highlighting the gap between current capabilities and the vision of fully autonomous flights.

The journey toward autonomous urban air travel is fraught with more complexities, including the establishment of standards for vehicle operation, pilot certification, and air traffic control. While eVTOLs have flown hundreds of test flights, there have also been safety concerns after prominent crashes involving propeller blades failing on one in 2022 and the crash of another in 2023. Both were being flown remotely at the time.

The question of who will manage these new airways remains an open discussion—national aviation authorities such as the FAA, state agencies, local municipalities, or some combination thereof.

Creating the Future

In the long term, the vision for electric air taxis aligns with a future where autonomous vehicles ply the urban skies, akin to scenes from Back to the Future. This future, however, not only requires technological leaps in automation and battery efficiency but also a societal shift in how people perceive and accept the role of autonomous vehicles, both cars and aircraft, in their daily lives. Safety is still an issue with autonomous vehicles on the ground.

The successful integration of electric air taxis into urban and rural environments hinges on their ability to offer safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation.

As these vehicles overcome the industry’s many hurdles, and regulations evolve to support their operation in the years ahead, I believe we could witness a profound transformation in air mobility. The skies offer a new layer of connectivity, reshaping cities and how we navigate them.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Joby

Čínští vědci oznámili, že zkoumají druh pouštního mechu, který by teoreticky mohl růst na povrchu rudé planety. Upozornil na to magazín The Guardian. Mech Syntrichia caninervis byl během experimentů dlouhodobě vystaven teplotě – 112 stupňů Fahrenheita, tedy – 80 stupňů Celsia, aniž by ho to ...

Linux Mint is a user-friendly GNU/Linux desktop distribution built upon Ubuntu and Debian for maximum reliability while offering an aesthetically pleasing user experience. It stands out from other Linux distributions due to its ease of use, full multimedia support, and impressive security, making it perfect for personal and professional computing use.

Number of partners acknowledging data theft continues to rise

The number of financial institutions caught up in the ransomware attack on Evolve Bank & Trust continues to rise as fintech businesses Wise and Affirm both confirm they have been materially affected.…

Bosch eBike Systems na veletrhu Eurobike představil novinky ve svém ekosystému pro elektrokola.

Vybrali jsme devět nejlepších navigací pro Android a iOS • Na své si přijdou řidiči, cyklisté i pěší • Většinu aplikací lze používat zdarma

The cybersecurity threat landscape has witnessed a dramatic and alarming rise in the average ransomware payment, an increase exceeding 500%. Sophos, a global leader in cybersecurity, revealed in its annual "State of Ransomware 2024" report that the average ransom payment has increased 500% in the last year with organizations that paid a ransom reporting an average payment of $2 million, up from