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YouTube is once again the most popular social media platform (2 minute read)

YouTube and Facebook are the most dominant social media platforms in the US. YouTube's user base grew from 73 percent of adults in 2019 to 81 percent in 2021. Facebook's share of users remained at 69 percent over the same period. The only other platform to see statistically significant growth since 2019 was Reddit. While growth has slowed down, users still report using social media frequently throughout the day.

The French army is testing Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot in combat scenarios (4 minute read)

Images of Boston Dynamics' Spot robot alongside French soldiers during military exercises were shared on Twitter recently by France's foremost military school. The robots were being tested by students of the school to assess the usefulness of the robots in future battlefields. Boston Dynamics forbids the use of its Spot robot for harm or intimidation. Images of Spot participating in the military exercises are available in the article.

CPU algorithm trains deep neural nets up to 15 times faster than top GPU trainers (2 minute read)

Computer scientists from Rice University have created an artificial intelligence software that can train deep neural networks 15 times faster on commodity processors than software that relies on graphic processors. The team built its system by recasting deep neural network training as a search problem that could be solved with hash tables. Companies can spend millions of dollars a week just to train and fine-tune their AI workloads, so the benefits of making commodity CPUs more efficient than specialized hardware cannot be understated.

Infrared Radiation From Our Hands Could Be the Future of Encryption (2 minute read)

Chinese engineers have developed a method for using the infrared radiation emitted from the human hand to secure data. The human hand radiates infrared light, and each finger can serve as an independent infrared light source. As fingerprints are unique, they can be used as a non-copyable encryption key. Using human components as IR light sources could provide more flexibility in the way we control engineered systems.