TECH and science news.

The smart home industry provides conveniences such as safety, energy efficiency, and entertainment, though it can also be complex. This discussion includes reviews and updates on smart home technologies from major companies like Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, and Home Assistant. Notable updates encompass Amazon's discontinuation of Astro for Business robots, the increasing adoption of Matter as a standard, LG's acquisition of Homey to improve its smart home offerings, and recent advancements in Samsung SmartThings.

 Microsoft's new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, powered by Qualcomm, aim to prove they can compete with Intel and AMD. Early reviews discuss processor performance, emulation issues, and battery life. The episode also covers the Boox Palma, a new gadget with an E Ink screen that's gaining popularity for its simplicity and access to Google Play Store. 

This spring, hype has been swirling around two AI-powered gadgets: the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1. Both promised AI automation and seamless conversation with an ever-present, always-helpful AI assistant.

They failed. Prominent tech reviewer Marques Brownlee called the Humane AI Pin the “worst product I’ve ever reviewed,” while the Rabbit R1 received the somewhat kinder verdict of “barely reviewable.”

“I don’t think it will be more than six months before we see actual [AI] applications that are run on PCs, or even mobile devices.”—Dwith Chenna, AMD

Dr. John Pagonis, Principal UX Researcher at Zanshin Labs, observed that any new consumer device needs to prove it’s better than what’s already available, a task both AI gadgets failed. “What is the problem [these devices] solve? What is the need that they cover? That is not obvious.”

So, that’s a wrap, right?

1. Mistral AI Launches Codestral Mamba 7B: A Revolutionary Code LLM Achieving 75% on HumanEval for Python Coding.

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In a notable tribute to Cleopatra, Mistral AI has announced the release of Codestral Mamba 7B, a cutting-edge language model (LLM) specialized in code generation. Based on the Mamba2 architecture, this new model marks a significant milestone in AI and coding technology. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, Codestral Mamba 7B is available for free use, modification, and distribution, promising to open new avenues in AI architecture research.

The release of Codestral Mamba 7B follows Mistral AI’s earlier success with the Mixtral family, underscoring the company’s commitment to pioneering new AI architectures. Codestral Mamba 7B distinguishes itself from traditional Transformer models by offering linear time inference and the theoretical capability to model sequences of infinite length. This unique feature allows users to engage extensively with the model, receiving quick responses regardless of the input length. Such efficiency is particularly valuable for coding applications, making Codestral Mamba 7B a powerful tool for enhancing code productivity.

🔥🔥 LLMWare Introduces Model Depot: An Extensive Collection of Small Language Models (SLMs) for Intel PCs (Promoted)

Codestral Mamba 7B is engineered to excel in advanced code and reasoning tasks. The model’s performance is on par with state-of-the-art (SOTA) Transformer-based models, making it a competitive option for developers. Mistral AI has rigorously tested Codestral Mamba 7B’s in-context retrieval capabilities, which can handle up to 256k tokens, positioning it as an excellent local code assistant.

Mistral AI provides several options for developers looking to deploy Codestral Mamba 7B. The model can be deployed using the mistral-inference SDK, which relies on reference implementations available on Mamba’s GitHub repository. Codestral Mamba 7B can be deployed through TensorRT-LLM, and local inference support is expected to be available soon in llama.cpp. The model’s raw weights are available for download from HuggingFace, ensuring broad accessibility for developers.

Open Cosmos, a UK-based startup focused on combating climate change through satellite technology, has received a €60 million contract to develop seven satellites for Greece, part of a project called Optical Constellation.

Science fiction writers and directors often explore high-tech futures that can be awe-inspiring or frightening, showcasing the power of imagination in envisioning what might come. While these speculative narratives are primarily fictional and not intended as rigorous predictions, they can still influence technological development. Throughout history, some sci-fi concepts have proven prescient, contributing to the evolution of real-world technology.