Move over, Sonos Nightmare Zipcar outage is a warning against complete app dependency Zipcar blames "increased site traffic," but total app reliance is also at fault. Scharon Harding Dec 3, 2024 4:49 pm | 38 Credit: Getty Credit: Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAn app outage that locked numerous rental car customers out of their vehicles is a reminder of the perils of completely relying on apps for basic functionalityespecially when those apps have seemingly limited support resources.Zipcar is a car-sharing service that lets customers pay a membership fee to rent vehicles. Users use the Zipcar app to locate cars, unlock and lock them, share images of the vehicle (for proof that you didn't damage it), and report concerns. One typically goes through the entire Zipcar rental process without interacting with a human. Avoiding car rental lines and customer service representatives seems efficient until the app utterly fails you.As reported by 404 Media today, Zipcar experienced an outage on Friday that prevented the app from functioning properly for numerous users. Without the app support, people could not unlock cars to start rentals, open cars that didn't come with keys, lock cars, and/or return cars before their rental period expired.A commenter on the Zipcar Facebook said this about their experience:After automatically being logged out the [Z]ipcar app and then locked out from the car, we had waited on the phone for more than 1 hour to get to talk to a person who promised to extend the rental time. After we returned the car within the extended time, we had to spend half an hour to reach the customer service for ending the trip and locking the car. The most ridiculous thing afterward was that we got the delay fee for more than $100 which [Z]ipcar customer service said ... would be waived!!!Another commenter said they endured a "nightmare of being out and unable to lock the car for at least three hours." They claimed that customer service "didn't really address anything" and told them they'd be held responsible if someone stole the car that couldn't lock.Similarly, other users reported long wait times with customer support, enduring cold temperatures while locked out of vehicles, and trepidation regarding cars they couldn't lock. 404 Media spoke with an unnamed person who said their friend's passport was locked in a Zipcar, adding that he "missed his flight last night and his final exam today because of this.On November 29, Zipcar provided a statement on its Facebook noting "some technical issues" on its app and website impacting users' ability "to search, book[,] or access" reservations. It also provided a phone number for contacting support but noted "longer than usual wait times" while apologizing.In a statement shared with Ars Technica, Zipcar provided further information about the outage:During part of Friday afternoon, we experienced a rare outage related to increased site traffic. Interest in our Black Friday promotion caused SMS delivery service constraints on the SMS/MMS network for our site and many others, unfortunately. For a small percentage of our members who were not already logged into our mobile app, this resulted in login difficulties, impacting their reservations. While this issue is resolved, were also working to prevent it from reoccurring.A company spokesperson also told Ars that it will work with affected members for remediation. The company rep said that "responses have varied by case but include refunding reservations, providing driving credit for future trips, and refunding alternate transportation." However, a person named Shawn, who 404 Media spoke with, pointed to a $213 fee that Zipcar said would take up to five business days to process.Zipcar's rep declined to specify how many people were affected by the outage.A warning against total app relianceZipcar's app problems have not only cost it money but also traumatized some users who may think twice before using Zipcar again. The convenience of using apps to control physical products only exists if said apps are functioning and prepared for high-volume time periods, such as Thanksgiving weekend.Despite Zipcar's claims of a "small percentage" of users being affected, the company's customer support system seemed overwhelmed. Long wait times coupled with misinformation regarding things like fees make already perturbed customers feel more deserted.Those are the pitfalls of completely relying on apps for basic functionality. There was a time when Zipcar members automatically received physical "Zipcards" for opening doors. Now, they're not really advertised, and users have to request one. A Zipcard. Credit: Getty Zipcars also used to include keys inside of locked cars more frequently. Reducing these physical aspects may have saved the company money but effectively put all of Zipcar's eggs in one basket.Nightmarish app problems like the one Zipcar experienced can be a deal-breaker. Just look at Sonos, whose botched app update is costing it millions. Further, turning something like car rentals into a virtually app-only service is a risky endeavor that can quickly overcomplicate simple tasks.Some New Zealand gas stations were out of luck earlier this year, for example, when a Leap Day glitch caused payment processing software to stop working. Gas stations that needed apps for payments weren't able to make sales, and drivers were inconvenienced.Apps can simplify and streamline while delivering ingenuity. But that doesn't mean traditional, app-free measures should be eliminated as backups.Scharon HardingSenior Product ReviewerScharon HardingSenior Product Reviewer Scharon is Ars Technicas Senior Product Reviewer writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer technology, including laptops, mechanical keyboards, and monitors. Shes based in Brooklyn. 38 Comments

Shane Snider, Senior Writer, InformationWeekDecember 3, 20243 Min ReadAndrii Yalanskyi via Alamy StockThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday announced action against Gravy Analytics and Venntel Inc. and a separate action against Mobilewalla that would ban the companies from selling sensitive location data.The FTCs complaint against the companies alleges Virginia-based Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel violated the FTC Act by unfairly selling sensitive consumer location data, and by collecting and using consumers location data without consent for commercial and government uses. Gravy Analytics, the complaint says, also sold health and medical decisions, political activities, and religious views collected from location data.In the case of Georgia-based Mobilewalla, the FTC alleges the company collected more than 500 million unique consumer advertising identifiers paired with precise location data between January 2018 and June 2020. The company sold the raw data to third parties, including advertisers, data brokers, and analytics firms, the FTC says.In a statement, FTC Chair Lina Khan said, Persistent tracking by data brokers can put millions of Americans at risk, exposing the precise locations where service members are stationed or which medical treatments someone is seeking. Mobilewalla exploited vulnerabilities in digital ad markets to harvest this data at a stunning scale.In a message to InformationWeek, Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta pushed back on the FTCs case, but accepted the results. Mobilewalla respects consumer privacy and has been evolving our privacy protections throughout our history as a company, he says. While we disagree with many of the FTCs allegations and implications that Mobilewalla tracks and targets individuals based on sensitive categories, we are satisfied that the resolution will allow us to continue providing valuable insights to businesses in a manner that respects and protects consumer privacy.FTC had strong words for the companies' practices.Surreptitious surveillance by data brokers undermines our civil liberties and puts servicemembers, union workers, religious minorities, and others at risk, Samuel Levine, director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. This is the FTCs fourth action taken this year challenging the sale of sensitive location data, and its past time for the industry to get serious about protecting Americans privacy.The FTC also alleged Gravy Analytics and Venntel obtained consumer location information from other data suppliers and claimed to collect, process, and curate more than 17 billion signals from a billion mobile devices daily.The complaint also alleges Gravy Analytics used geofencing to create a virtual geographical boundary to identify and sell lists of consumers who attended certain events related to medical conditions and places of worship. The unauthorized data brokering put consumers at risk of stigma, discrimination, violence, and other harms, according to the complaint.You may not know a lot about Gravy Analytics, but Gravy Analytics may know a lot about you, reads a joint statement by FTC commissioners Alvaro M. Bedoya, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Melissa Holyoak, and Khan.Gravy Analytics merged with Unacast last year. The companys website says it offers location intelligence for every business. Mobilewallas website says its products make your AI smarter with high-quality, privacy compliant consumer data and predictive feature InformationWeek has reached out to Gravy Analytics and Mobilewalla for comment and will update with any response.About the AuthorShane SniderSenior Writer, InformationWeekShane Snider is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of industry experience. He started his career as a general assignment reporter and has covered government, business, education, technology and much more. He was a reporter for the Triangle Business Journal, Raleigh News and Observer and most recently a tech reporter for CRN. He was also a top wedding photographer for many years, traveling across the country and around the world. He lives in Raleigh with his wife and two children.See more from Shane SniderNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeReportsMore Reports

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A warty comb jelly (Mnemiopsis leidyi)Andrey Nekrasov / Alamy Stock PhotoIt may be the closest scientists have yet come to creating Frankensteins monster. Living pieces of dozens of individual animals known as comb jellies have been fused together to create an array of new forms that, in some cases, survived for more than a week.These chimeric animals are more than just physically connected bits of different individuals, says Leonid Moroz at the University of Florida. Their nervous systems also fuse together, creating entities that heand his colleague Tigran Norekian, also at the University of Florida, call

Your sweat holds a lot of information about the state of your healthRyan Pierse/Getty ImagesWow, youre quite salty, says Stefan van der Fluit, looking over my numbers. I could have told him that. I have just done a sweaty, 45-minute workout on an exercise bike and the salt is already starting to crystallise on my T-shirt. But van der Fluit knows exactly how salty. I have just sweated out 347 milligrams of sodium in 370 millilitres of water. Thats on the high side, sodium-wise, and I need to replenish.Van der Fluit is the co-founder of a company called Flowbio, based in London, which specialises in sweat analysis for athletes. During my workout, I was wearing a sensor called the S1 on my upper arm, which collects sweat in a tiny channel, automatically measures its volume and sodium concentration, and transmits the data to a smartphone app. Using that data, the app calculates my total losses.If I were an endurance athlete, that data would be extremely valuable, perhaps the difference between winning and losing. Im not, but van der Fluit is. As a competitive cyclist, he has had long-standing problems with dehydration. But since he started using the sweat sensor, they have gone away, and his performance has improved.Flowbios S1 is one of a handful of wearable sweat sensors that have come onto the market in the past few years. They are mainly aimed at people who sweat a lot in the course of their jobs athletes and manual workers but they are also available to

A startup called Exa is pitching a new spin on generative search. It uses the tech behind large language models to return lists of results that it claims are more on point than those from its rivals, including Google and OpenAI. The aim is to turn the internets chaotic tangle of web pages into a kind of directory, with results that are specific and precise. Exa already provides its search engine as a back-end service to companies that want to build their own applications on top of it. Today it is launching the first consumer version of that search engine, called Websets. The web is a collection of data, but its a mess," says Exa cofounder and CEO Will Bryk. "There's a Joe Rogan video over here, an Atlantic article over there. There's no organization. But the dream is for the web to feel like a database. Websets is aimed at power users who need to look for things that other search engines arent great at finding, such as types of people or companies. Ask it for startups making futuristic hardware and you get a list of specific companies hundreds long rather than hit-or-miss links to web pages that mention those terms. Google cant do that, says Bryk: Theres a lot of valuable use cases for investors or recruiters Things have moved fast since MIT Technology Review broke the news in 2021 that Google researchers were exploring the use of large language models in a new kind of search engine. The idea soon attracted fierce critics. But tech companies took little notice. Three years on, giants like Google and Microsoft jostle with a raft of buzzy newcomers like Perplexity and OpenAI, which launched ChatGPT Search in October, for a piece of this hot new trend. Exa isnt (yet) trying to out-do any of those companies. Instead, its proposing something new. Most other search firms wrap large language models around existing search engines, using the models to analyze a users query and then summarize the results. But the search engines themselves havent changed much. Perplexity still directs its queries to Google Search or Bing, for example. Think of todays AI search engines as a sandwich with fresh bread but stale filling. More than keywords Exa provides users with familiar lists of links but uses the tech behind large language models to reinvent how search itself is done. Heres the basic idea: Google works by crawling the web and building a vast index of keywords that then get matched to users queries. Exa crawls the web and encodes the contents of web pages into a format known as embeddings, which can be processed by large language models. Embeddings turn words into numbers in such a way that words with similar meanings become numbers with similar values. In effect, this lets Exa capture the meaning of text on web pages, not just the keywords. A screenshot of Websets showing results for the search: "companies; startups; US-based; healthcare focus; technical co-founder" Large language models use embeddings to predict the next words in a sentence. Exas search engine predicts the next link. Type startups making futuristic hardware and the model will come up with (real) links that might follow that phrase. Exas approach comes at cost, however. Encoding pages rather than indexing keywords is slow and expensive. Exa has encoded some billion web pages, says Bryk. Thats tiny next to Google, which has indexed around a trillion. But Bryk doesnt see this as a problem: You dont have to embed the whole web to be useful, he says. (Fun fact: exa means a 1 followed by 18 0s and googol means a 1 followed by 100 0s.) Websets is very slow at returning results. A search can sometimes take several minutes. But Bryk claims its worth it. A lot of our customers started to ask for, like, thousands of results, or tens of thousands, he says. And they were okay with going to get a cup of coffee and coming back to a huge list. I find Exa most useful when I don't know exactly what Im looking for, says Andrew Gao, a computer science student at Stanford Univesrsity who has used the search engine. For instance, the query an interesting blog post on LLMs in finance works better on Exa than Perplexity. But theyre good at different things, he says: I use both for different purposes. I think embeddings are a great way to represent entities like real-world people, places, and things, says Mike Tung, CEO of Diffbot, a company using knowledge graphs to build yet another kind of search engine. But he notes that you lose a lot of information if you try to embed whole sentences or pages of text: Representing War and Peace as a single embedding would lose nearly all of the specific events that happened in that story, leaving just a general sense of its genre and period. Bryk acknowledges that Exa is a work in progress. He points to other limitations, too. Exa is not as good as rival search engines if you just want to look up a single piece of information, such as the name of Taylor Swifts boyfriend or who Will Bryk is: Itll give a lot of Polish-sounding people, because my last name is Polish and embeddings are bad at matching exact keywords, he says. For now Exa gets around this by throwing keywords back into the mix when theyre needed. But Bryk is bullish: Were covering up the gaps in the embedding method until the embedding method gets so good that we dont need to cover up the gaps.

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Nominate someone to our 2025 list of Innovators Under 35 Every year, MIT Technology Review recognizes 35 young innovators who are doing pioneering work across a range of technical fields including biotechnology, materials science, artificial intelligence, computing, and more. Previous winners include Lisu Su, now CEO of AMD, Andrew Ng, a computer scientist and serial entrepreneur, Jack Dorsey (two years after he launched Twitter), and Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot. Were now taking nominations for our 2025 list and you can submit one here. The process takes just a few minutes. Nominations will close at 11:59 PM ET on January 20, 2025. You can nominate yourself or someone you know, based anywhere in the world. The only rule is that the nominee must be under the age of 35 on October 1, 2025. Read more about what were looking for here. How US AI policy might change under Trump President Biden first witnessed the capabilities of ChatGPT in 2022 during a demo from Arati Prabhakar, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in the oval office. That demo set a slew of events into motion, and encouraged President Biden to support the USs AI sector, while managing the safety risks that will come from it.However, that approach could change under Trump. Our AI reporter James ODonnell sat down with Prabhakar earlier this month to discuss what might be next. Read the full story. This story is from Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 What's next for Intel? Its CEO has been given the boot, and his replacement will be tasked with turning things around. (WSJ $)+ The departed Pat Gelsinger was firmly opposed to breaking the firm up. (Bloomberg $)+ Five years ago, Intel was on top of the world. What happened? (FT $)2 China has hit back at the latest US chip export restrictions By banning shipments of critical chip minerals to America. (FT $)+ Beijing accused the US of hindering normal trade exchanges. (The Guardian)+ Whats next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)3 Hackers are using AI to mine troves of personal data The new tools make it much easier to weaponize sensitive information. (WP $)+ The US government is trying to crack down on the sale of civilians personal data. (404 Media)+ Five ways criminals are using AI. (MIT Technology Review)4 Elon Musk has been denied a $56 million pay package for a second timeStill, hes not exactly short of a few bob. (The Verge) 5 A network of women were duped into donating eggs to a disgraced billionaire The US fertility industry's loose regulations have left the system open to abuse. (Bloomberg $)+ Conservative politicians are spreading anti-contraceptive disinformation. (New Yorker $)+ I took an international trip with my frozen eggs to learn about the fertility industry. (MIT Technology Review) 6 An AI agent could do your next Black Friday shop for you It could spell an end to tedious price-checking and bargain monitoring. (TechCrunch)+ What are AI agents? (MIT Technology Review)7 A new fleet of US nuclear reactors is on the horizonSimilar major pushes have failed in the past. Will this time be different? (The Atlantic $) + Why the lifetime of nuclear plants is getting longer. (MIT Technology Review)8 It turns out that fish have a brain microbiomeIt raises the question whether humans could have one too. (Quanta Magazine) + The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush. (MIT Technology Review)9 Why ChatGPT has become an emotional crutch for so many people But beware using it to offload emotional labor. Its only a chatbot, after all. (The Guardian)+ The name David Mayer causes ChatGPT to melt down, for some reason. (TechCrunch)+ Heres how people are actually using AI. (MIT Technology Review)10 This Indigenous community may become Canadas first climate refugeesThe Western Arctic regions permafrost is thawing, and the Inuvialuit will be forced to leave their homes. (NYT $) Quote of the day "It was a tough situation when Pat showed up, and things look much worse now." Financial analysts from Bernstein warn investors that whoever takes over from departing Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has their work cut out for them, Insider reports. The big story How to measure all the worlds fresh water December 2021 The Congo River is the worlds second-largest river system after the Amazon. More than 75 million people depend on it for food and water, as do thousands of species of plants and animals. The massive tropical rainforest sprawled across its middle helps regulate the entire Earths climate system, but the amount of water in it is something of a mystery. Scientists rely on monitoring stations to track the river, but what was once a network of some 400 stations has dwindled to just 15. Measuring water is key to helping people prepare for natural disasters and adapt to climate changeso researchers are increasingly filling data gaps using information gathered from space. Read the full story. Maria Gallucci We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.) + If you love a good steak, heres where you can track down some of the best. + Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker reflects on something truly terrifying: the workplace.+ Happy birthday to the one and only Prince of Darkness!+ The bar of the HR Giger Museum in Switzerland looks exactly how youd expect it wouldcompletely mindblowing.

Ren Binglin, 25, is a photographer and digital nomad based in China.While browsing online, he came across a retirement village for young people and booked a two-month visit.He picked fruit, meditated, and drank beers with new friends. He says his experience in the mountains changed him.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ren Binglin, a photographer and digital nomad based in China. Ren spent almost two months at a youth retirement village. The following has been translated and edited for length and clarity.A few days of work in Beijing was all it took for me to realize I needed a break.In early September, I was finding everything in the capital city too expensive. City life was suffocating me.I was born in Henan a province 400 miles south of the capital but now, at 25, I'm a digital nomad, and there's no longer one part of the country that feels like home. I live in a mix of hostels, bed and breakfasts, and even rented a house from a farmer once. I also try to spend a few weeks a year back with my family.I love different parts of China for different reasons. I like the climate of Dali, the wooden houses of Shaoxing, my friends in Taihang Mountain, the mornings in Yangshuo, and the nights in Shanghai.One morning, I started searching for places I could visit up in the mountains. I came across Guanye, a youth retirement village, on Xiaohongshu, China's Instagram-like platform. It was clear it had nothing to do with caregiving or elders, just a lot of nature. I was intrigued by the pictures of mountains, a swimming pool, and people around my age cooking, hiking, and watching films. I felt I'd get along with them. By noon that same day, I had left.I bought a train ticket for just over 10 yuan, or $1.38, from Beijing. The village is in Hebei, about 180 miles southwest of Beijing, and the train ride to Baijian, the closest station, took around three hours. A courtyard at Guanye, a youth retirement village in China. Ren Binglin My room at the homeSoon after arriving, I was shown to my room. All of the rooms had mountain views. Mine had floor-to-ceiling windows, a 1.8-meter-long bed, a fridge, a bathroom, and a TV. The TV stayed off for the whole stay.The room was cheap: 3,600 yuan, or $500, a month, including food and accommodation. It was a courtyard house with rooms surrounding a yard, and the space was around 2,150 square feet.As a photographer, my income isn't stable. There are times I have nothing coming in for two weeks, but then in one day, I can make enough to cover the month.The difference between life in the city and life up in the mountains was huge. The quiet in the village was a luxury for me. Sometimes, in the morning, I would hear the sound of goats eating grass. It was wonderful to be woken up that way. Mountain views from Guanye, a youth retirement village in China. Ren Binglin Guests were mostly Gen Zers and MillennialsMost of the people at the nursing home were between 20 and 30 I'm 25. I also came across a handful of people in their 40s and 50s.I didn't need to put in much effort to meet interesting people. There was a natural flow that attracted all kinds of guests. The managers treated me like a friend, not a customer.I wasn't the typical guest. Most people go there to "lie flat" for a while before gradually returning to work. It's a bit like a short vacation for them. However, I was still working.I enjoy my work, so this didn't bother me. I work in AI photography, customizing work for clients and also teaching students. I do a lot of it online.Most people I spoke to at the home had encountered a setback in life, in their career, in their love life, or with family members. I met a lawyer who told me he was tired of being busy andhad started to live a nomadic life, but due to the requirements of his job, he often had to go to court.I also spoke to one of the founders, Cui Kai, a lot. He turned 30 this year but gives off the feeling of still being in middle school. There was no greasiness to him.I asked another cofounder why he had chosen to run the nursing home in his hometown. He said hevillage, and the courtyards belonged to a relative of his. He said his grandparents were around 95 now, and he wanted to spend more time with them.I could see that the village was very poor and that the young people had left to find work. All I saw were older people playing mahjong every day. That cofounder said he didn't want to abandon his hometown. He wanted to build it up. Ren Binglin spent his birthday at the home, drinking beer and snacking on nuts. Ren Binglin Our daily routineFor breakfast, they served eggs, steamed buns, rice, millet porridge, and flatbreads. At noon, there was chicken and beef, stir-fried potatoes and beans, and cabbage. An auntie would cook for us.They often organized activities like picking persimmons or chestnuts, hiking, or meditation exercises in the morning. I heard that in the summer, they swim, watch movies, or drink together.I participated most in the drinking-related activities. Sometimes we'd go to the river, collect wood to make a fire, and drink and chat. For my birthday, I remember around 25 of us drinking together, cracking jokes, and snacking on nuts, dried fruit, and cake. We went through so many crates of beer. There was baijiu, a Chinese liquor, too.I think this home helps people recharge. In the city, costs are high, and some people are unhappy with their jobs. I find it difficult to establish deep connections with people. It's as if we live for others and wear a mask.The experience changed meI spoke to other guests who work in the city, and they told me their energy levels increased after going to the mountains. With more physical space, I felt like I had more psychological space.Going to Guanye changed me a little, but not as much as some of the other people I met. I've managed to keep my life less intense over the past few years.Recently, I caught up with some people I'd met at Guanye. We went to see a movie together. I found them to be different from when we first met. They were more reserved. It seemed that once they moved back to the city, they hid their true selves.

AWS announced plans for an AI supercomputer, UltraCluster, with Trainium 2 chips at re:Invent.AWS may be able to reduce reliance on Nvidia by developing its own AI infrastructure.Apple said it's using Trainium 2 chips for Apple Intelligence.Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, made several significant new AWS announcements at the re:Invent conference on Tuesday.His two-and-a-half hour keynote delved into AWS's current software and hardware offerings and updates, with words from clients including Apple and JPMorgan. Graphics processing units (GPUs), supercomputers, and a surprise Apple cameo stuck out among the slew of information.AWS, the cloud computing arm of Amazon, has been developing its own semiconductors to train AI. On Tuesday, Garman said it's creating UltraServers containing 64 of its Trainium 2 chips so companies can scale up their GenAI workloads.Moreover, it's also building an AI supercomputer, an UltraCluster made up of UltraServers, in partnership with AI startup Anthropic. Named Project Rainier, it will be "the world's largest AI compute cluster reported to date available for Anthropic to build and deploy its future models on" when completed, according to an Amazon blog post. Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic.Such strides could push AWS further into competition with other tech firms in the ongoing AI arms race, including AI chip giant Nvidia.Here are four takeaways from Garman's full keynote on Tuesday.AWS' Trainium chips could compete with Nvidia.Nvidia currently dominates the AI chip market with its sought-after and pricey GPUs, but Garman backed AWS's homegrown silicon during his keynote on Tuesday. His company's goal is to reduce the cost of AI, he said."Today, there's really only one choice on the GPU side, and it's just Nvidia. We think that customers would appreciate having multiple choices," Garman told the Wall Street Journal.AI is growing rapidly, and the demand for chips that make the technology possible is poised to grow alongside it. Major tech companies, like Google and Microsoft, are venturing into chip creation as well to find an alternative to Nvidia.However, Garman told The Journal the doesn't expect Trainium to dethrone Nvidia "for a long time.""But, hopefully, Trainium can carve out a good niche where I actually think it's going to be a great option for many workloads not all workloads," he said.AWS also introduced Trainium3, its next-gen chip.AWS' new supercomputer could go toe to toe with Elon Musk's xAI.According to The Journal, the chip cluster known as Project Rainier is expected to be available in 2025. Once it is ready, Anthropic plans to use it to train AI models.With "hundreds of thousands" of Trainium chips, it would challenge Elon Musk's xAI's Colossus a supercomputer with 100,000 of Nvidia's Hopper chips.Apple is considering Trainium 2 for Apple Intelligence training.Garman said that Apple is one of its customers using AWS chips, like Amazon Graviton and Inferentia, for services including Siri.Benoit Dupin, senior director of AI and machine learning at Apple, then took to the stage at the Las Vegas conference. He said the company worked with AWS for "virtually all phases" of its AI and machine learning life cycle."One of the unique elements of Apple business is the scale at which we operate and the speed with which we innovate," Dupin said.He added, "AWS has been able to keep the pace, and we've been customers for more than a decade."Now, Dupin said Apple is in the early stages of testing Trainium 2 chips to potentially help train Apple Intelligence.The company introduced a new generation of foundational models, Amazon Nova.Amazon announced some new kids on the GenAI block.AWS customers will be able to use Amazon Nova-powered GenAI applications "to understand videos, charts, and documents, or generate videos and other multimedia content," Amazon said. There are a range of models available at different costs, it said. "Amazon Nova Micro, Amazon Nova Lite, and Amazon Nova Pro are at least 75% less expensive than the best-performing models in their respective intelligence classes in Amazon Bedrock," Amazon said.

Support independent journalism that matters become a Vox Member today.South Korea is in the grip of a political crisis after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday a shocking move that sparked mass protests and drew sharp rebuke from the countrys parliament. Though Yoon has said he will reverse his declaration, thats unlikely to end South Koreas political problems, which go beyond Tuesdays emergency.Yoon first made the declaration during a televised announcement on Tuesday night local time, claiming that the opposition party to his government was in the midst of an insurgency and trying to overthrow the free democracy, likely in reference to the political deadlock between himself and the parliament that has prevented him from enacting his agenda. Despite that ongoing gridlock, the move to declare martial law took Yoons political opponents, allies, the South Korean public and the world by surprise. Shortly after Yoons declaration, South Koreas parliament, known as the National Assembly, met to unanimously vote down the martial law decree. There is no reason to declare martial law. We cannot let the military rule this country, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said Tuesday. President Yoon Suk Yeol has betrayed the people. President Yoons illegal declaration of emergency martial law is null and void. Martial law typically involves the suspension of civilian government and rule by military decree in a major emergency, such as intense armed conflict.Despite Yoons pledge to lift his declaration, the country is still in limbo. What comes next is unclear. Here is what you need to know.Why did the president declare martial law?Yoon only spoke in broad strokes about his decision. However, its possible that his declaration was influenced by his dwindling public support, political gridlock, and an ongoing ethics investigation into his wife over a handbag alleged to be an improper gift.The conservative Yoon is in the second year of his five-year term; during his tenure, his approval rating has fallen below 20 percentage points. Hes also been deadlocked with the National Assembly, which is controlled by the center-left Democratic Party, over his political agenda. Yoon certainly is unpopular and frustrated by an inability to do politics, Celeste Arrington, director of the George Washington Institute for Korean Studies, told Vox. Yoon has used an unprecedented number of presidential vetoes to try and push his agenda through, Arrington said. Hes also launched politically motivated prosecutions of the opposition party. Meanwhile, the opposition party has tried to impeach dozens of members of this government and has launched investigations into the first lady. So this [political battle] was back and forth and back and forth, building. Yoon did explicitly claim that North Korean elements played a role in his decision to declare martial law, though theres no actual evidence of North Korea playing a role in the present crisis. Instead, his reference to North Korea may refer to the major political divide between the countrys two main parties on whether and how to engage with their totalitarian and belligerent northern neighbor.What does martial law in South Korea entail?Under martial law, the executive branch is allowed to take control of the media, and Yoon ordered the countrys medical personnel, who have been on strike for much of the year, back to work within 48 hours. Its not clear to what extent those measures were put into place.Furthermore, political activity, including political party meetings and rallies, is supposed to cease. This was obviously disregarded: The National Assembly met, and protests continued through the night. Armed guards surrounded the National Assembly building Tuesday night; 190 members of the 300-member body showed up to unanimously vote down the measure, with some scaling the fence around the building to do so, the Wall Street Journal reported.What has the reaction been?Yoons declaration has been almost universally unpopular within South Korea. Citizens showed up to protest even engaging in clashes with security forces.Both the opposition leader and the leader of Yoons own party denounced Yoons decision. Its an illegal, unconstitutional declaration of martial law that does not meet the requirements, said Han Dong-hoon, a former justice minister and leader of Yoons People Power Party. South Korea is a democratic country. We will protect democracy alongside our citizens.The US, a longtime ally of South Korea, said it did not know about Yoons declaration before it came. We have every hope and expectation that any political disputes will be resolved peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Tuesday. Whats next?Yoon has said he would lift the martial law declaration in accordance with the National Assemblys vote, as he is constitutionally required to do. The cabinet agreed to lift the order early Wednesday morning local time, and protesters have begun to disperse. However, this is not the end of the crisis, Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, told Vox. The decision [to declare martial law] appears to be an attempt to assert authority in a climate where his favorability has been declining, but this is basically political suicide as it risks being seen as an overreach of power and might lead to him facing impeachment, Shin said.Indeed, an opposition lawmaker from a smaller party has already called for Yoons impeachment. Regardless of what happens to Yoon, polarization between the two main parties and high levels of public dissatisfaction with politics remain, Arrington told Vox. Neither side is particularly popular; the public trust in both the conservatives and the progressives is low, she said. Theres a deep frustration with the way democratic institutions are functioning, in particular the political parties and the National Assembly. And the end of the martial law crisis does nothing to change that reality. Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. 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