A US government shutdown would have deep, far-reaching consequences and imperil efforts to protect people from lead and

Canada’s explosive wildfire season has already pumped millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some of

Researchers in China have developed an artificial intelligence tool capable of designing a working computer in under five hours. The team of 19 computer scientists from five different institutions made the AI breakthrough after setting out to prove that machines can create computer chips in a similar way to humans. The feat was performed 1,000 times faster than a human team could have achieved it, the researchers claimed, marking a major step towards building self-evolving machines. “Design activity... distinguishes humanity from other animals and traditional machines, and endowing machines with design abilities at the human level or beyond has been a long-term pursuit,” the scientists wrote in a paper detailing their research. “We present a new AI approach to automatically design a central processing unit (CPU), the brain of a computer, and one of the world’s most intricate devices humanity has ever designed.” The project involved the layout of an industrial-scale RISC-V CPU, capable of running the Linux operating system and achieving an accuracy of 99.99 per cent in validation tests. The AI bypassed the manual programming and verification process of the typical design cycle, which the researchers said “consumes more than 60-80 per cent of the design time and resources” of human teams. The AI was also able to autonomously make discoveries involving computer design, uncovering something called the von Neumann architecture, first invented in 1945. The overall performance of the CPU is relatively modest compared to modern computers, with the researchers saying it can perform at a similar level to a 1991 Intel 80486SX CPU. Developing the AI approach, however, has the potential to “reform the semiconductor industry by significantly reducing the design cycle”, the researchers said. The research is detailed in a study, titled ‘Pushing the limits of machine design: Automated CPU design with AI’. Leading AI chip maker Nvidia has previously used artificial intelligence to optimise its computer chip designs, publishing a new approach to AI-powered chip design in March that could significantly improve the cost and performance of CPUs. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot Google’s DeepMind unveils AI robot that can teach itself unsupervised Robots can now learn new skills like picking up knives by watching YouTube videos

JACKSON, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2023--

One year after one of the most talked about software upgrades since the Y2K changeover more than two

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 21, 2023--

British lawmakers have approved an ambitious but controversial new internet safety law with wide-ranging powers to crack down on digital and social media companies like TikTok, Google and Facebook and Instagram parent Meta

The 15 fastest players in EA FC 24 Ultimate Team at launch including Kylian Mbappe, Karim Adeyemi, Sheraldo Becker and Alphonso Davies.

He's a big Manchester United fan, but iShowSpeed had no idea who a group of Newcastle United footballers were after they 'butchered' him during a late night Fortnite session. Three players took down iShowSpeed during his latest gaming stream, but despite being notable Premier League stars the content creator had no clue who he was up against. "Who the f*** is Harvey Barnes, bro?" iShowSpeed shouted after meeting a sticky end in the game. Harvey Barnes, as football fans know, is a talented winger on the fringes of the England squad who moved to Newcastle from Leicester in the summer. Viewers weren’t 100 per cent sure whether it was the real Harvey Barnes who had taken iShowSpeed down at first. However, he was joined by players with the aliases Anthony Gordon and Paul Dummett, who also play for Newcastle, which seemed to confirm things. "I’m creased some Fortnite pro players and Speed got butchered by Harvey Barnes, Paul Dummett and Anthony Gordon at 1am,” one social media user posted after seeing the incident unfolded. Another said: “Never thought i’d hear speed and xqc talking about harvey barnes lmfao.” One more added: “Speed getting his ass handed to him on Fortnite by Harvey Barnes is hilarious.” “A crossover we never knew we needed…” another wrote. It comes a few days after iShowSpeed attracted controversy after attempting a dangerous “coke and condom challenge” on his live stream. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

The Earth has been hit by a powerful blast of energy from the very depths of the universe. The fast radio burst is the most distant of its kind of ever seen, coming from so far away that it has travelled eight billion years to get to Earth. It is also astonishingly powerful, one of the most energetic of its kind ever seen. In less than a second, it released the same energy that comes out of the Sun in more than 30 years. Fast radio bursts are intense, short bursts of energy that come from unknown but extreme activity in space. Scientists are still unsure of how they are formed, but explanations have included everything from extraterrestrial technology to neutron stars. The newly discovered burst appears to come from a small group of merging galaxies, scientists say, which helps support current theories about where they come from. But the intensity of the burst is harder to explain, which challenges our understanding of how they are actually emitted. “While we still don’t know what causes these massive bursts of energy, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the cosmos and that we will be able to use them to detect matter between galaxies, and better understand the structure of the Universe,” said Ryan Shannon, from the Swinburne University of Technology. The blasts could be useful ways of answering some of the deepest questions about our cosmos, such as how much it actually weighs. At the moment, attempts to answer that have led to confusing results. “If we count up the amount of normal matter in the Universe — the atoms that we are all made of — we find that more than half of what should be there today is missing,” said Professor Shannon. “We think that the missing matter is hiding in the space between galaxies, but it may just be so hot and diffuse that it’s impossible to see using normal techniques. “Fast radio bursts sense this ionised material. Even in space that is nearly perfectly empty they can ‘see’ all the electrons, and that allows us to measure how much stuff is between the galaxies.” The blast was spotted last year, using a telescope in Japan. Researchers then used other telescopes to verify the find and examine it in more detail. “Using ASKAP’s array of dishes, we were able to determine precisely where the burst came from,” said Stuart Ryder, the first author on the paper. “Then we used the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to search for the source galaxy, finding it to be older and further away than any other FRB source found to date, and likely within a small group of merging galaxies.” The findings are reported in a new paper, ‘A luminous fast radio burst that probes the Universe at redshift 1’, published in the journal Science. Read More Scientists unveil radical new ‘missing law’ to explain the universe India’s Modi declares goal to land human on Moon by 2040 Researchers reveal source of largest ever Mars quake

Amazon's flagship Prime Day sale may not be as singular as it once was, but

Netflix will send out its last red envelope on Friday, marking an end to 25 years of mailing DVDs to members.