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Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Intel launched the new Intel Core Ultra 200S series processor family that will scale AI PC capabilities to desktop platforms and usher in the first enthusiast desktop AI PCs. Led by the Intel Core Ultra 9 processor 285K, the latest generation of enthusiast desktop processors includes five unlocked desktop processors equipped with up to 8 next-gen Performance-cores (P-cores), the fastest cores available for desktop PCs1, and up to 16 next-gen Efficient-cores (E-cores) that altogether result in up to 14% more performance in multi-threaded workloads than the previous generation. The new family are the first neural processing unit (NPU)-enabled desktop processors for enthusiasts and come with a built-in Xe GPU with state-of-the-art media support. “The new Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors deliver on our goals to significantly cut power usage while retaining outstanding gaming performance and delivering leadership compute. The result is a cooler and quieter user experience elevated by new AI gaming and creation capabilities enabled by the NPU, and leadership media performance that leverages our growing graphics portfolio,” said Robert Hallock, vice president and general manager of AI and Technical Marketing at the Client Computing Group at Intel, in a statement. Why it matters Thanks to the latest Intel core and efficiency innovations, Intel Core Ultra 200S desktop processors deliver a landmark reduction in power usage with up to 58% lower package power in everyday applications4 and up to 165W lower system power5 while gaming. The new processor family combines improved efficiency with improved performance, also delivering up to 6% faster single-threaded6 and up to 14% faster multi-threaded performance over the previous generation. With complete AI capabilities powered by the CPU, GPU and NPU, enthusiasts get the intelligent and powerful performance they need for content creation and gaming, all with a reduced energy footprint. By bringing the AI PC to enthusiasts for the first time, the Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors deliver up to 50% faster performance in AI-enabled creator applications against competing flagship processors. The newly available NPU enables offloading of AI functions. Examples include freeing up discrete GPUs to increase gaming frame rates, significantly reducing power usage in AI workloads, and enabling accessibility use cases such as face- and gesture-tracking in games while minimizing performance impact. Intel’s 1st AI PC for enthusiasts Performance gains for Intel’s latest desktop AI PC processor. With up to 36 platform TOPS, the new Intel Core Ultra 200S series processor is Intel’s first and ​best desktop processor ​for AI PCs​. The Complete Enthusiast Solution: Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors offer excellent performance in AI and content creation, and power an immersive gaming experience, with up to 28% gaming performance uplift compared to competing flagship processors. Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors’ use the new Intel 800 Series chipset, extending platform compatibility with up to 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up to 8 SATA 3.0 ports, and up to 10 USB 3.2 ports, empowering enthusiasts to take advantage of the latest connectivity, storage, and other technologies. Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors also bring new overclocking functionality with fine-grain controls, with top turbo frequency in 16.6 MHz steps for P-cores and E-cores. A new memory controller supports fast, new XMP and CUDIMM DDR5 memory up to 48GB per DIMM for up to 192GB in total, and the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility now includes one-click overclocking enhancements. And Intel Core Ultra 200S processors come equipped with 20 CPU PCIe 5.0 lanes, 4 CPU PCIe 4.0 lanes, support for 2 integrated Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 6E​ and Bluetooth 5.3​. Intel Killer Wi-Fi delivers supercharged wireless performance and enables seamless, immersive online gameplay through application priority auto-detection, bandwidth analysis and management, and smart AP selection and switching. The machiens have multi-engine security. Intel Silicon Security Engine helps preserve data confidentiality and code integrity while maintaining high performance for demanding AI workloads. Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors will be available at retail online and in stores, and via OEM partner systems starting Oct. 24, 2024. source

Many computer science careers offer roles to contract and freelance tech professionals. For example, game designers, web developers, and software developers may work on a contract basis for a specific project rather than as full-time employees.  Computer science professionals may prefer the flexibility of contract work. Rather than working for a single company, freelancers build a portfolio of clients and work on a variety of projects. That can mean designing custom websites for clients, contributing to a software testing project, or creating custom code. However, consider the benefits and drawbacks of contract positions before going freelance. Computer science contractor jobs do not pay benefits, for example. While contractors often earn a higher rate, they pay additional taxes. And contractors may find themselves out of work between projects.  source

DeadlyScience founder Corey Tutt standing next to McLaren’s F1 car. Image: Corey Tutt Over the weekend at the Australian Grand Prix, local STEM charity organisation DeadlyScience’s logo was plastered on McLaren’s F1 cars to provide awareness about the STEM gap experienced by Indigenous children living in remote Australia. DeadlyScience is a charity that provides STEM resources to over 220 remote Australian indigenous communities, with the hope of getting more Indigenous children into STEM pathways. Speaking with ZDNet, the organisation’s CEO, Corey Tutt, unpacked the severity of the STEM gap experienced by remote Indigenous communities in Australia.  Tutt, a Gamilaraay man and NSW Young Australian of the Year in 2019, explained that remote Indigenous communities are not encouraged to focus on STEM and lack the basic resources that are commonly available in urban communities. “Resources as basic as Lego, technology books, and telescopes are not available in most of these communities,” Tutt told ZDNet. “We need the funding to be able to provide the staff to go out there and teach the science and provide, again, the resources and opportunities to the young ones. As it currently stands, there is no real funding for that as it’s not as valued as literacy, which is wrong because I think STEM is just as important.” The decision to put DeadlyScience’s logo onto the race cars was made by Smartsheet, one of McLaren’s sponsors, who chose to donate its ad space on the car to a worthy cause. The DeadlyScience logo was originally only going to feature on the side of the car, but McLaren also decided to add it to the halo as well — the safety ring around the driver’s head which also displays sponsorship. In addition to donating its sponsor space, SmartSheet is also providing pro bono consultancy advice and its software to DeadlyScience. From Smartsheet’s point of view, the company’s CEO Mark Mader said the authenticity of a corporate’s values are backed by action, which meant the company wanted to follow through and empower change by establishing outreach programs, such as the one it has with DeadlyScience. Unpacking Smartsheet’s partnership with DeadlyScience, Mader said his company donated its F1 sponsor space as he believed this is how his company could generate maximum impact. The company currently sponsors the Special Olympics, ice hockey team Seattle Kraken, yachtswoman Pip Hare, and McLaren. Of these, Mader said McLaren is its biggest platform for providing awareness. “It was quite important for us to choose, if we wanted to have maximum impact, choose the thing that has the largest scope. And that was the one out of our portfolio, whether it’s Special Olympics, or Pip Hare or the Seattle Kraken, this was the big daddy,” Mader said. With more funding from established corporations, Tutt hopes DeadlyScience can eventually move from providing the basics to more advanced resources such as cameras, drones, and 3D printers so that Indigenous children can see the potential of STEM and the opportunities it can provide. Over the past few weeks, DeadlyScience received its largest donation yet. The donation will see seven and a half tonnes worth of Lego sent out to remote Indigenous communities. While the donation is encouraging, Tutt said it’s just the start of a long road, with the STEM champion hoping his charity can serve as a model for more people to create similar organisations and for other corporations to help out. “It’s really important that these organisations are successful so that other people are encouraged to start their own forms of DeadlyScience so that we can start solving these problems holistically,” Tutt said. Related Coverage Indigenous businesses gain AU$188m in IT contracts through DTA marketplaces The Australian government has boasted through its Indigenous Procurement Policy that almost 600 IT contracts have been awarded to Indigenous SMEs. An Indigenous-owned organisation is putting First Nations people on the radar The Centre for Appropriate Technology was forced to get creative after government funding was cut. Willyama’s role in helping Indigenous Australians secure a career in cybersecurity The company also has its sight set on becoming the first 100% Aboriginal-owned IT company to list on the ASX. Dion Devow’s mission to help bridge the gap between Indigenous Australians and IT The entrepreneur is living proof it’s possible to be in tech, without needing technical knowledge. source

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It does not take policy positions. The Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research and other data-driven research. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) has become a popular method for grounding large language models (LLMs) in external knowledge. RAG systems typically use an embedding model to encode documents in a knowledge corpus and select those that are most relevant to the user’s query. However, standard retrieval methods often fail to account for context-specific details that can make a big difference in application-specific datasets. In a new paper, researchers at Cornell University introduce “contextual document embeddings,” a technique that improves the performance of embedding models by making them aware of the context in which documents are retrieved. The limitations of bi-encoders The most common approach for document retrieval in RAG is to use “bi-encoders,” where an embedding model creates a fixed representation of each document and stores it in a vector database. During inference, the embedding of the query is calculated and compared to the stored embeddings to find the most relevant documents. Bi-encoders have become a popular choice for document retrieval in RAG systems due to their efficiency and scalability. However, bi-encoders often struggle with nuanced, application-specific datasets because they are trained on generic data. In fact, when it comes to specialized knowledge corpora, they can fall short of classic statistical methods such as BM25 in certain tasks. “Our project started with the study of BM25, an old-school algorithm for text retrieval,” John (Jack) Morris, a doctoral student at Cornell Tech and co-author of the paper, told VentureBeat. “We performed a little analysis and saw that the more out-of-domain the dataset is, the more BM25 outperforms neural networks.” BM25 achieves its flexibility by calculating the weight of each word in the context of the corpus it is indexing. For example, if a word appears in many documents in the knowledge corpus, its weight will be reduced, even if it is an important keyword in other contexts. This allows BM25 to adapt to the specific characteristics of different datasets. “Traditional neural network-based dense retrieval models can’t do this because they just set weights once, based on the training data,” Morris said. “We tried to design an approach that could fix this.” Contextual document embeddings Contextual document embeddings Credit: arXiv The Cornell researchers propose two complementary methods to improve the performance of bi-encoders by adding the notion of context to document embeddings. “If you think about retrieval as a ‘competition’ between documents to see which is most relevant to a given search query, we use ‘context’ to inform the encoder about the other documents that will be in the competition,” Morris said. The first method modifies the training process of the embedding model. The researchers use a technique that groups similar documents before training the embedding model. They then use contrastive learning to train the encoder on distinguishing documents within each cluster.  Contrastive learning is an unsupervised technique where the model is trained to tell the difference between positive and negative examples. By being forced to distinguish between similar documents, the model becomes more sensitive to subtle differences that are important in specific contexts. The second method modifies the architecture of the bi-encoder. The researchers augment the encoder with a mechanism that gives it access to the corpus during the embedding process. This allows the encoder to take into account the context of the document when generating its embedding. The augmented architecture works in two stages. First, it calculates a shared embedding for the cluster to which the document belongs. Then, it combines this shared embedding with the document’s unique features to create a contextualized embedding. This approach enables the model to capture both the general context of the document’s cluster and the specific details that make it unique. The output is still an embedding of the same size as a regular bi-encoder, so it does not require any changes to the retrieval process. The impact of contextual document embeddings The researchers evaluated their method on various benchmarks and found that it consistently outperformed standard bi-encoders of similar sizes, especially in out-of-domain settings where the training and test datasets are significantly different. “Our model should be useful for any domain that’s materially different from the training data, and can be thought of as a cheap replacement for finetuning domain-specific embedding models,” Morris said. The contextual embeddings can be used to improve the performance of RAG systems in different domains. For example, if all of your documents share a structure or context, a normal embedding model would waste space in its embeddings by storing this redundant structure or information.  “Contextual embeddings, on the other hand, can see from the surrounding context that this shared information isn’t useful, and throw it away before deciding exactly what to store in the embedding,” Morris said. The researchers have released a small version of their contextual document embedding model (cde-small-v1). It can be used as a drop-in replacement for popular open-source tools such as HuggingFace and SentenceTransformers to create custom embeddings for different applications. Morris says that contextual embeddings are not limited to text-based models can be extended to other modalities, such as text-to-image architectures. There is also room to improve them with more advanced clustering algorithms and evaluate the effectiveness of the technique at larger scales. source

There can be little doubt that the FAA is paving the way for a framework governing the widespread operation of commercial drones in the U.S. In advance of a definitive ruling on whether commercial drones can operate beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), the FAA has been busily granting case-by-case permission to drone operators for exactly that. One recent example, just announced, drone company American Robotics has added seven additional sites of operation approved by the FAA for its automated BVLOS drone technology, the Scout System. American Robotics has 10 operational sights across eight U.S. states. “American Robotics is excited to have seven additional sites of operation approved by the FAA. As we continue to build upon our offerings, we look forward to providing current and future customers with the tools needed to unlock scalable, autonomous drone operations that will help propel their businesses and critical industries forward,” says Reese Mozer, co-founder and CEO of American Robotics. “Not only is this a milestone for American Robotics, but it is also another signal that we have reached an inflection point in commercial drone operations in the United States, and American Robotics is proud to be at the forefront of these industry advancements.” Elsewhere in the commercial drone sector, Percepto, which offers autonomous inspection by industrial robotics, recently announced it will deploy autonomous drones to monitor Florida Power & Light’s substations and power distribution grids across the state. The deployment represents the largest commercial autonomous drone project in the world, a staggering feat given the relatively slow pace with which the FAA has moved to adopt a framework. Not surprisingly, both Percepto and American Robotics are on the FAA’s industry-focused BVLOS rulemaking committee, which is tasked with helping the FAA adopt a regulatory framework for wider commercial drone adoption. The companies that invested early in that process are reaping early benefits from their friendly stance toward the FAA.  The FAA previously issued a nationwide waiver for Florida Power & Light to fly Percepto drones for surveillance and inspection purposes at sites owned and serviced by FPL. The Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) has provided its regulatory recommendations to fully incorporate highly automated BVLOS operations flights in US national airspace, a process that is expected to take place in the months ahead. For players like Percepto and American Robotics, eventual approval will open the floodgates. The FAA has been very deliberate in its progress (slow in the eyes of some in the sector).  “Every step by American Robotics toward full autonomy is significant: autonomous drones provide continuous, real-time information,” says David Boardman, CEO of Stockpile Reports. “With zero touch, high frequency automated data collection, the bulk materials supply chain will be transformed as we can provide answers to enable real-time decisions at any site. This approval is a critical turning point in addressing the market demand for continuous information.” source

Asian immigrants come from many cultures and origins. Their migration stories are also diverse. The Vietnam War and other conflicts in Southeast Asia brought Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees to the United States. More recently, flows of Asian immigrants, particularly highly skilled immigrants from India and China, came to study and work in the U.S. This chapter explores Asian American immigrants’ backgrounds and their experiences adjusting to life in the U.S. A demographic profile of Asian American immigrants Some 13 million Asian Americans are immigrants, making up 54% of the Asian American population in 2022, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The five largest Asian immigrant groups – Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese and Korean Americans – make up about 80% of the Asian American immigrant adult population. Additionally, 14% of Asian immigrants are of another single Asian ethnicity and 6% identify with two or more Asian ethnicities. Asian American immigrants’ experiences in the United States are impacted by their diverse demographic backgrounds. Years in the U.S.: About half (51%) of Asian immigrant adults have lived in the country more than 20 years. Some 22% have been in the country for 11 to 20 years, and another 27% have lived in the U.S. for a decade or less. Education: Among those ages 25 and older, 57% have a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 28% have a high school diploma or less. Income: 52% of Asian immigrant adults live in families with a yearly income of $100,000 or more, while 14% are in families with yearly incomes of less than $30,000. Why do Asian immigrants come to the U.S.? Asian immigrants have different motivations for coming to the U.S. According to the Center survey, 28% say they immigrated to the U.S. to be with family, 27% immigrated for economic opportunities, 26% immigrated for educational opportunities, and 7% immigrated due to conflict or persecution in their origin country. Some 4% cited other reasons for coming to the U.S. Asian immigrants’ main reason for coming to the U.S. differs significantly by ethnic groups and by how long ago they arrived in the country. By ethnicity Among Chinese immigrants, 38% say they came for educational opportunities while 31% immigrated to be with family. Among Filipino immigrants, 41% immigrated for economic opportunities and another 41% say they came to be with family. Among Indian immigrants, the most common reasons given were economic opportunities (42%) and educational opportunities (29%). Among Korean immigrants, 38% immigrated to be with family, while 28% and 26% say they came for educational or economic opportunities respectively. Among Vietnamese immigrants, 32% say they came mainly to avoid conflict or persecution in their origin countries, and 29% say they immigrated to be with family. Among immigrants of less populous ethnic groups, about a quarter each say they came for educational opportunities (26%) or to be with family (25%). Some 21% say they came for economic opportunities, and 13% say they came due to conflict or persecution in origin countries. By years in the U.S. Nearly half of those who have been in the country 10 years or less say they came to the U.S. for educational opportunities (44%). Smaller shares of those who have been in the U.S. for 11 to 20 years (32%) and those living in the country more than 20 years (19%) say the same. Those who have been living in the country more than 20 years are most likely to say their main reason for coming was to be with family (36%). Smaller shares of those who have been in the U.S. for 11 to 20 years (25%) or 10 years or less (22%) say the same. Where do Asian immigrants find support when they arrive in the U.S.? Many immigrants face financial challenges when they first arrive in the U.S. due to various factors, such as language barriers and a lack of credit history in the country. In the first six months of living in the U.S., a majority of Asian immigrants (58%) say they received financial assistance in some form. This includes: 52% who say they received financial assistance from family or friends. 15% who received assistance from federal, state or local governments. 10% who received assistance from religious organizations, such as churches and temples. 5% who received assistance from Asian community organizations. 10% who say they received assistance from some other group or person. Still, about a third of Asian immigrants (35%) say they did not receive financial assistance during their first six months living in the U.S. from any of the sources asked about in the survey. By main reason for immigrating     About two-thirds of immigrants who came to the U.S. due to conflict or persecution in origin countries (64%) say they received assistance from the government during their first six months in the U.S. By comparison, only about one-in-ten immigrants who came for other reasons say the same. Immigrants who came to the U.S. for economic opportunities are the least likely to say they received help from any source. About half say this (50%), compared with 85% among those who came to escape conflict, 70% who came for educational opportunities and 60% of those who came to be with family. By ethnicity Vietnamese immigrants and immigrants of less populous ethnic groups are more likely than Chinese, Filipino, Indian and Korean immigrants to say they received financial assistance from the government, religious organizations and Asian community organizations within six months of immigrating. Notably, these are also the groups most likely to cite escaping conflict as one of the main reasons for immigrating to the U.S. 48% of Vietnamese immigrants say they received financial assistance from governments. A quarter of immigrants from less populous immigrant ethnic groups say the same. 28% of Vietnamese immigrants, 19% of immigrants from less populous ethnic groups and 9% of Korean immigrants received assistance from religious organizations when they arrived in the country, compared with fewer than 5% among other ethnic groups.

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Third Dimension AI raised $7 million to enable game developers to build 3D game worlds using generative AI. The capital will be used to expand the Third Dimension team, further train generative AI models that convert 2D (images/video) to 3D and to bring to life Third Dimension’s vision of becoming the leading 3D generation company, said Tolga Kart, CEO of Third Dimension, in an interview with GamesBeat. Felicis led the funding round, with participation from Abstract Ventures, MVP, Soma Capital and the Salt Fund. The founders are autonomous vehicle and gaming experts: Kart, Piotr Sokolski and Özgun Pelvan. They created Third Dimension to simplify creation of large-scale 3D environments, whether real or imaginary, and make it as easy as pressing a button. Third Dimension can build worlds for drone piloting. Prior to founding Third Dimension, Kart was vice president of engineering for a synthetic data company, Parallel Domain. Before joining Tesla as technical program management & simulation for autopilot for over two years, Kart was a senior director on Call of Duty at Activision for over seven years. Kart worked on Call of Duty: WWII and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare while working for Activision’s Sledgehammer Games studio. Sokolski spent four years at Wayve building photorealistic neural simulators for self-driving cars, as well as over three years at Google; and Pelvan is a published machine learning engineer with five published papers about neural networks and data imputation. Third Dimension provides immersive quality, rendering engine ready content that is ready to use by professionals across multiple industries. Third Dimension’s target customers range from The U.S. Military to video game developers to autonomous vehicle companies. “The ability to simulate the real world is one of the last frontiers in solving some very difficult engineering problems”, said Kart. “Video game engines combined with new generative AI technology will not only make creative industries’ content more robust, but will also enable all simulation efforts to represent the real world in the most accurate fashion.” How it works Third Dimension generates worlds for games. Third Dimension wants to build a one-stop tool that accelerates companies’ abilities to create worlds, allows artists to have a baseline to get to quality faster and allows engineers to build fantastical or entirely accurate representations of the real world in high-fidelity. This technology will accelerate workflows of developers from months of time to days or hours and help save millions in expensive graphics development budgets, the company said. In the world that Kart conceives, game artists in the future will stil be creating concepts. They can create a video or a 2D image or a 3D image. The can feed that into the AI engine, which will create a version of the world that is basedon the inspiration. “Now a level designer or a concept artist can block out a world and figure out what this world’s going to look like. They draw a concept. Maybe it takes a couple days. They feed out into a generation system that allows them to generate the world by Third Dimension, and within a day or two, they have a fully playable world,” Kart said. “It’s not only like pitching ideas, but it’s also like supercharging the production process. The core goal here is that it shouldn’t cost a billion dollars to make video games. We will just accelerate the process and therefore make it less expensive to create content at large scale.” Third Dimension generates worlds for autonomous vehicle testing. It won’t be just for video games. It can also be used for autonomous vehicle training, simulation, virtual backgrounds for film and other applications. Kart chose to focus on world generation because it is a large-scale production problem that consumers a ton of resources and makes games very expensive. He showed a demo of taking a 3D image and converting into a simulated game world with 3D geometry. Third Dimension foresees virtual set applications for film and TV. “The goal here is to make it look like real life,” Kart said. “We are going to go after the actual final pixels that are going to end up on the screen. It has to save time and money. Otherwise, it’s not useful for anybody.” Kart said the company is in the midst of research still in terms of how it converts videos into 3D mesh. “We’re creating a large-scale 3D world reconstruction pipeline,” he said. “Third Dimension is going to redefine 3D creation.” says Aydin Senkut, managing partner at Felicis, in a statement. “Their groundbreaking technology, which seamlessly generates precise 3D environments with a single click, is set to transform how engineers and artists create and simulate both real and imagined environments. By accelerating creativity and enhancing the detail in simulations, Third Dimension opens up new possibilities across various industries from defense to video games, and more. We’re so excited to be partnering with this incredibly experienced, veteran team.” Origins Two of Third Dimension’s founders. The company got started earlier this year. The aims is to enable developers to create large scale, usable environments, whether they’re true digital twins of real places, or completely virtual worlds. They wanted to create 3D versions of real world locations like San Francisco. These worlds can be used for games, simulation, military applications and geospatial work. It gets there through a combination of reconstruction, and generation. The work is a combination of Radiance Fields and Diffusion (Nerf, Gaussian Splatting and Image/Video Generation). With the workflow in the future, Third Dimension envisions the creator starts with an image, either drawn by the creator generated. The creator can also have a 3D block of the world, using the creator’s own inspiration or source image. That gets converted directly to 3D using Third Dimension’s tech, and it’s ready to be loaded into a game engine. Kart started working on this in early 2023. Third Dimension will also focus on military

Chipotle Some of the most interesting tech development is happening in an unusual space: Fast food. From burger-flipping robots to drone delivery and Amazon-level logistics, the face of fast food is changing quickly.  The latest proof? Chipotle has announced a new venture fund called Cultivate Next, which will make early-stage investments into strategically aligned companies. Why does a quick-serve chain need a venture fund? I put the question to Chipotle CTO Curt Garner. “Cultivate Next aims to support seed to Series B stage companies that can accelerate our strategic priorities such as running great restaurants,” says Garner, “amplifying technology and innovation, further advancing our Food With Integrity mission, and expanding access and convenience for our consumers.” The subtext is that competition is fierce in fast food, and it pays to be in on the ground floor of technological innovation — a lesson the sector might well have gleaned from Amazon’s ambitious takeover of Kiva Robotics, which was a big key in unlocking Amazon’s logistical competitive advantage. “Cultivate Next allows us to meet consumer and employee preferences that have evolved over the last two years,” says Garner. “We have an aggressive goal of achieving 7,000 restaurants, and technology is the key to accelerating these growth plans.” Also: Are ghost kitchens here to stay? Chipotle is already making headway, teaming up with companies like Miso Robotics on a tortilla chip-making robot, which Chipotle is piloting at select locations. The chain is also testing RFID technology for backend management, which is critical to maintaining quality in a high throughput kitchen.  “Chipotle is testing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to enhance its traceability program and inventory management systems,” says Garner. “Ingredients arrive at Chipotle restaurants affixed with RFID enabled case labels and are scanned by RFID readers. Our RFID program is designed to allow the company to act on food safety and quality concerns swiftly, efficiently, and precisely.” The new venture fund will have an initial size of $50 million and will be financed solely by Chipotle. As funds go, it’s not the biggest, but this is surely a sign of growing competition and white-hot development in an industry largely aided by pandemic-influenced consumer trends but also reeling from an extremely competitive labor market and rising wages. In that regard, it’s a bellwether and sign of lively development in fast food tech. “We are looking to support a wide range of forward-thinking ventures, including those focused on farming, supply chain, employee experience, and advanced robotics.” source

If one event demonstrated how vulnerable organisations and infrastructure around the world are to software vulnerabilities, it was Log4j. The critical zero-day vulnerability in the Java logging library Apache Log4j enabled attackers to remotely execute code to gain access to devices and networks. And because the open-source software was embedded in a vast array of applications, services and enterprise software tools, it had the potential for widespread and long-term disruption. No wonder director of US cybersecurity and infrastructure agency CISA Jen Easterly described the vulnerability as “one of the most serious that I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious”. Security patches were quickly developed and organisations quickly moved to apply them, although the ubiquitous nature of Log4j’s open-source code means there will be software and applications out there which won’t receive the update, especially if nobody realises Log4j was part of the development process. Log4j is just one example of severe security vulnerabilities being uncovered in software that has been used for years – and it came 20 years on from when then-Microsoft boss Bill Gates issued his Trustworthy Computing memo, which urged Microsoft’s developers to produce more secure software after various bugs and security holes were uncovered in its operating systems and products. “Eventually, our software should be so fundamentally secure that customers never even worry about it,” wrote Gates. Two decades on, and while Microsoft Windows is generally regarded as a pretty secure operating system, when used correctly and security updates are applied, even Microsoft can’t escape critical vulnerabilities in the code. And more broadly there is still far too much insecure software around.  Software has always shipped with bugs, but software and services have become ever more important to our everyday lives, making the potential impact of security vulnerabilities even more damaging. In many ways, software development hasn’t evolved to face this new reality: products are still rolled out, only for vulnerabilities — sometimes major ones — to be discovered much later. And when it involves a somewhat obscure component like Log4j, organisations might not even be certain if they’re affected or not. “Inherently, the way in which we do software development just lends itself towards bugs and defects,” says Rob Juncker, CTO and head of software development teams at Code42, a software security company. “The accelerated pace of work that we live in contradicts most security teams’ best practices”. Cybersecurity wants to make software secure, a process that needs investment, personnel and time. That often flies in the face of what companies who build software require: they want to make sure the code is functional and to get it out there as soon as possible, especially if new products or features are depending on it. SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report)  The state of security is massively uneven across the industry, with pretty good security at some of the top vendors, but the vast majority — even ones that are very well funded — lacking basic security investments, says Katie Moussouris, CEO of Luta Security. “Unfortunately we’ve seen an under investment in cybersecurity over the last 20 to 30 years,” she says. What companies need to do is ensure that cybersecurity is baked in from the very start and features as the building blocks of a software development program at every step of the way — that way all the risks and potential risks can be considered and acted upon before they become problems down the line. “If you think about how software is made and deployed and maintained, it’s a whole supply chain. And it starts out with when you’re designing software or you’re thinking about new features,” says Jonathan Knudsen, senior security strategist at Synopsys, a software security firm. “In the design phase, you have to be thinking about security, you have to do threat modelling or architectural risk assessments, so before you write any code you’re just thinking about how it’s going to work, and what it’s going to do — and how it could be attacked,” he added. SEE: Cybersecurity: Let’s get tactical (ZDNet special report) Bosses might be reluctant to spend the extra time and resources on ensuring code gets delivered securely, but in the long run, it should be the most effective approach, both in terms of cost and reputation. It’s safer to ensure the code is secure before it’s pushed out, rather than having to deliver a critical update later on, which might not even be applied by users. The problem is that many organisations are so used to a development model where speed is key, and the risks to them of producing poor code are seen as relatively low. That could mean more hands-on intervention is needed in order to encourage secure code — and penalise those who wilfully ignore security issues. “In other industries where we have such a critical dependence we regulated those industries, but software has remained largely unregulated, so there’s no software liability laws,” says Moussouris. There has been some movement in this area: for example, the UK government has proposed legislation that will require Internet of Things device manufacturers to follow a set of software security rules before the products can be sold. However, government moves at a slower pace than the industry and even if the rules are enforced, there’s already plenty of IoT software out there that wouldn’t meet the requirements. But as organisations and individuals become more aware of cybersecurity issues, it could be the case that the market forces organisations to take software more seriously — leaving software developers who don’t think about security left behind. “Globally we’re getting more aware about software security, and so I think this is going to translate into buyers asking tougher questions from their builders,” says Knudsen. It’s, therefore, vital for software developers, their customers and even society as a whole, that software security is taken seriously. Perhaps ‘move fast and fix things’ could be a new motto for developers to aspire to. MORE ON CYBERSECURITY source