On Thursday, Windsurf, a startup that develops popular AI tools for software engineers, announced the launch of its first family of AI software engineering models, or SWE-1 for short. The startup says it trained its new family of AI models — SWE-1, SWE-1-lite, and SWE-1-mini — to be optimized for the “entire software engineering process,” not just coding. The launch of Windsurf’s in-house AI models may come as a shock to some, given that OpenAI has reportedly closed a $3 billion deal to acquire Windsurf. However, this model launch suggests Windsurf is trying to expand beyond just developing applications to also developing the models that power them. According to Windsurf, SWE-1, the largest and most capable AI model of the bunch, performs competitively with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, and Gemini 2.5 Pro on internal programming benchmarks. However, SWE-1 appears to fall short of frontier AI models, such as Claude 3.7 Sonnet, on software engineering tasks. Windsurf says its SWE-1-lite and SWE-1-mini models will be available for all users on its platform, free or paid. Meanwhile, SWE-1 will only be available to paid users. Windsurf did not immediately announce pricing for its SWE-1 models but claims it’s cheaper to serve than Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Windsurf is best known for tools that allow software engineers to write and edit code through conversations with an AI chatbot, a practice known as “vibe coding.” Other popular vibe-coding startups include Cursor, the largest in the space, as well as Lovable. Most of these startups, including Windsurf, have traditionally relied on AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to power their applications. In a video announcing the SWE models, comments made by Windsurf’s Head of Research, Nicholas Moy, underscore Windsurf’s newest efforts to differentiate its approach. “Today’s frontier models are optimized for coding, and they’ve made massive strides over the last couple of years,” says Moy. “But they’re not enough for us … Coding is not software engineering.” Windsurf notes in a blog post that while other models are good at writing code, they struggle to work between multiple surfaces — as programmers often do — such as terminals, IDEs, and the internet. The startup says SWE-1 was trained using a new data model and a “training recipe that encapsulates incomplete states, long-running tasks, and multiple surfaces.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW The startup describes SWE-1 as its “initial proof of concept,” suggesting it may release more AI models in the future.

VLMs have become central to building general-purpose AI systems capable of understanding and interacting in digital and real-world settings. By integrating visual and textual data, VLMs have driven advancements in multimodal reasoning, image editing, GUI agents, robotics, and more, influencing sectors like education and healthcare. Despite this progress, VLMs still lag behind human capabilities, particularly in tasks involving 3D reasoning, object counting, creative visual interpretation, and interactive gameplay. A challenge lies in the scarcity of rich, diverse multimodal datasets, unlike the abundant textual resources available to LLMs. Additionally, multimodal data complexity poses significant training and evaluation hurdles.  Researchers at ByteDance have developed Seed1.5-VL, a compact yet powerful vision-language foundation model featuring a 532 M-parameter vision encoder and a 20 B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts LLM. Despite its efficient architecture, Seed1.5-VL achieves top results on 38 out of 60 public VLM benchmarks, excelling in tasks like GUI control, video understanding, and visual reasoning. It is trained on trillions of multimodal tokens using advanced data synthesis and post-training techniques, including human feedback. Innovations in training, such as hybrid parallelism and vision token redistribution, optimize performance. The model’s efficiency and strong reasoning capabilities suit real-world interactive applications like chatbots.  The Seed1.5-VL architecture features a vision encoder, an MLP adapter, and an LLM. Its custom vision encoder, Seed-ViT, supports native-resolution image input using 2D RoPE and processes images through 14×14 patches, followed by average pooling and an MLP. Pretraining involves masked image modeling, contrastive learning, and omni-modal alignment using images, text, and video-audio-caption pairs. The model uses a Dynamic Frame-Resolution Sampling approach for video encoding that adapts frame rates and resolutions based on content complexity, balancing efficiency and detail. This method enables effective spatial-temporal understanding within a token budget, ensuring comprehensive video representation across varied lengths and complexities.  The pre-training of Seed1.5-VL involved curating 3 trillion high-quality tokens across diverse domains. Image-text pairs from the web were filtered using CLIP scores, size/aspect ratio checks, and deduplication to reduce noise. Using domain-based sampling and duplication strategies, rare visual concepts were overrepresented to address class imbalance. Specialized datasets were added for OCR using annotated and synthetic text-rich images, charts, and tables—object grounding and counting tasks utilized bounding boxes, points, and auto-labeled web data. Additional tasks included 3D spatial understanding using depth annotations, and video understanding through multi-frame captioning, QA, and temporal grounding to support dynamic content analysis.  The evaluation highlights Seed-ViT and Seed1.5-VL’s competitive performance across vision-language tasks. Seed-ViT, despite having significantly fewer parameters, matches or outperforms larger models like InternVL-C and EVA-CLIP on zero-shot image classification tasks, showing high accuracy and robustness on datasets such as ImageNet-A and ObjectNet. Seed1.5-VL demonstrates strong capabilities in multimodal reasoning, general VQA, document understanding, and grounding. It achieves state-of-the-art benchmarks, particularly in complex reasoning, counting, and chart interpretation tasks. The model’s “thinking” mode, which incorporates longer reasoning chains, further enhances performance, indicating its strong ability in detailed visual understanding and task generalization.  In conclusion, Seed1.5-VL is a vision-language foundation model featuring a 532 M-parameter vision encoder and a 20 B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts language model. Despite its compact size, it achieves state-of-the-art results on 38 of 60 public benchmarks and excels in complex reasoning, OCR, diagram interpretation, 3D spatial understanding, and video analysis. It also performs well in agent-driven tasks like GUI control and gameplay, surpassing models like OpenAI CUA and Claude 3.7. The model shows strong generalization to tasks beyond its training scope. The study outlines its architecture, data pipeline, and training methods and identifies future directions, including enhancing tool-use and visual reasoning capabilities.  Check out the Paper and Project Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, feel free to follow us on Twitter and don’t forget to join our 90k+ ML SubReddit. The post ByteDance Introduces Seed1.5-VL: A Vision-Language Foundation Model Designed to Advance General-Purpose Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning appeared first on MarkTechPost.

The world is awash in data about, well, the world — thanks to satellites and environmental sensors. But there’s still a lot we can’t see, and Fieldstone Bio thinks microbes can change that. “They’ve evolved to sense and respond to information. It’s just trillions of calculations going on at all times all around us,” Brandon Fields, Fieldstone Bio’s co-founder and chief science officer, told TechCrunch. “How do we take that and actually manipulate that to gain benefits for us?” Fieldstone’s technology emerged from that question. The startup was founded in 2023 after spinning out of MIT, where professor Chris Voigt’s lab had developed a way to turn microbes into sensors. The scientists programmed the microbes to change color when they encountered something of interest, whether it be nutrients in soil or landmines hidden in the dirt, and then figured out how to detect them. “The key technology out of Chris’ lab is this idea of, ‘How do we actually visualize these cells from really far away?’” Fields said. Fieldstone Bio recently raised $5 million in seed funding led by Ubiquity Ventures with participation from E14 and LDV Capital, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The startup has been testing its technology in the lab, and the funding will let it test those microbes in the real world. Each strain is tailored to sense a particular compound, such as nitrogen on a farm field or TNT residue from a landmine.  “We isolate microbes from the environments we want to sense,” Fields said. “We build our sensors the DNA pieces, and we just drop them into these different ones and see which ones behave the best, which ones can last the longest.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Once the microbes are ready, Fieldstone will broadcast them using drones. After the microbes have some time to sense their environment — several hours to days, depending on the target — the company will have another drone snap photos of the area. The images aren’t the usual aerial photography seen on Google Maps. Rather, they’re taken using what’s known as a hyperspectral camera, which divide visible and infrared light into as many as 600 different colors. Because Fieldstone’s microbes will reflect light at a very specific wavelength, it can train AI models to look for those signals amid a torrent of data. “That’s where the power of AI comes in, because we can start using that information to tease out these really faint signals to produce really cool heat maps of the microbe sensing the environment,” Fields said. In addition to agriculture and national security applications, Fieldstone is also programming microbes to detect environmental contaminants like arsenic, CEO Patrick Stone said. “Instead of going to do core soil samples over every 100 feet — and then you have 100 foot resolution — we could get a one-inch resolution and really map out exactly where they need to go clean up stuff,” he said. Gene edited microbial sensors broadcast over farm fields are sure to raise the eyebrows among people who oppose genetic modification. Fields said that the company has been in contact with the EPA to ensure that the company follows regulations. Fields said that, over time, he hopes the company’s database will become large enough that it can train models to associate other signals in the environment with whatever data is returned by the microbes. That would allow hyperspectral cameras to detect, say, arsenic contamination without needing to spread the engineered microbes. “Eventually, you don’t need to apply the microbe at all,” Fields said. “You have drones, planes, and satellites now collecting information about chemical information on a global scale.”

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" The Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe has completed a morgue designed with a horizontal line that aligns with the large flat roof in Vera, Province of Santa Fe, Argentina.Under a commodatum agreement with the Provincial Government, the Judicial Morgue of the Judiciary of Santa Fe is situated on a portion of the Regional Hospital premises in the city of Vera.Named Judicial Morgue for the City of Vera, given the particular location and how the general public views this kind of architectural program, the intervention's main goal was to create a modern area that invites approach rather than rejection—or even one that people using the building's adjacent services might not notice. For this reason, the building is discreetly hidden behind reachable embankments covered with natural vegetation, leaving the viewer with only a horizontal line that is in line with the large flat roof that encloses the reception area, office spaces, the actual morgue, and the perimeter of the intermediate galleries. Rooms facing the back of the concrete embankment or adjacent plots are prioritized from the inside.Even though the main structure is surrounded by the embankments, the building was positioned to be visible in its entirety from nearly every aspect due to the lot's proportions. Its conserved native forest, which is included into the concept, produces diverse experiences when walked about at ground level, through the pedestrian entry, or via the car access road. The deliberate image of the "fifth façade"—an abstraction made up of the entire roof structure, the vertical boundary along the street, the infrastructure areas, the vehicle access road, the perimeter lines of the embankments and pedestrian access—is given special attention.Wind, shadow, rain, sun, and vegetation all become protagonists, meticulously incorporated into the architectural concept, as environmental and climatic aspects were carefully studied in the creation of this unique program. The structure is arranged around galleries, which act as areas of transition between the outside and the inside and, more importantly, as sun control systems, which help to lessen the harsh environment of the area. Among other things, a Venturi tube at the pedestrian entrance circulates air to chill the inside and splits to cool the outside walls.Administrative offices, conference rooms, identification rooms, cold storage rooms, X-ray and picture interpretation rooms, inclusive locker rooms, autopsy rooms, loading/unloading garages, pathological waste storage, and a main hall and reception area are all part of the functional plan. An infrastructure equipment cluster that houses air conditioning condensers, refrigeration units, a chiller, a hydropneumatic tank, a generator, and an external guard room are examples of supporting spaces. These are surrounded by an exposed shell of reinforced concrete walls and roof and are situated outside the huge metal roof.The courtyard, the pedestrian entrance, and the encircling galleries are notable semi-covered areas. They all have enormous circular open skylights that let in rainwater or filtered sunlight, making the room feel cozy and inviting for both professionals and guests. A semicircular bench serves as a reflective seating space beneath the skylights. Similar to how the building is visually protected from the exterior by concrete embankments covered in vegetation and purposefully placed pedestrian openings away from the hospital, the interior is similarly protected by intermediate areas that are intended to lessen the proximity and animosity of the reinforced concrete envelope to the south. This is accomplished by paving a courtyard with loose river stones of various colors, which lessens the impression on the eye and permits future plants to grow in between the stones.The building's partially covered sections face the designated vehicle access road to the north, and vertical screens act as a physical barrier in front of the urban street's protected row of native trees that border the entrance. Using metal structures, sheet metal, circular-section tubes, and a reinforced concrete planter, the physical boundary between the lot and the street was given special design consideration. This creates an expressive, organic line that opens up urban sightlines and draws attention to the main gate and institutional signage.The autopsy room and its auxiliary spaces are the heart of a morgue, thus biosafety regulations and the best use of circulation and support rooms were taken into consideration when designing the spaces. To circulate air and safeguard the working staff, the facility has specifically built climate control systems (power capacity and unique filters). It has a digital X-ray machine, surgical-grade lighting, specialized storage equipment, and two cutting-edge stainless steel autopsy tables made by national suppliers. Filtered natural light is let in through micro-perforated metal panels, softening the space's clinical feel. The main views are of the north inner courtyard.The building's infrastructure includes a generator for continuous power supply, self-sufficient solar power, a single absorption pit and separate outputs for pre-treating liquid waste that eventually discharges into the sewer system, and connections to municipal water and electricity. Additionally, it has video surveillance, complete climate control throughout, and intrusion and fire alarm systems. Interlocking permeable pavers and intermediate chambers were used to address drainage and paving issues caused by the lengthy access road that connected the building to the city roadway.Aluminum window frames, gypsum rock walls, oxidized metal sheets for the galleries' and semi-covered areas' ceilings, flush-joint interior ceilings, exposed reinforced concrete for the external envelope, hermetically sealed double-glazing in specific geometries for the operational spaces, and reinforced concrete partitions covered in perforated and plain metal sheets are among the materials used in the building. At the site and car entrances, the vehicle access road has unique wood elements, precast stormwater drains, and articulated paving. The structure is decorated with polished 30x30 cm granite mosaic tiles, and the kitchens and bathrooms have custom black Brazilian granite countertops. Whenever feasible, national and local suppliers were used.All things considered, this project has presented a big challenge for the professionals in our office, but its completion allows us to keep trying new things in the future. By bringing compassion and respect to a function that is usually disregarded because of its negative implications, it enables us to "reconsider our relationship with the afterlife." In the end, it is a project that offers the balance of beauty and usefulness that is the ultimate aim of architecture by articulating and integrating spaces to make them livable and noticeable.Section AASection BBEast elevationWest elevationNorth elevationSouth elevationProject factsProject name: Judicial Morgue for the City of VeraClient: Judicial Branch of the Province of Santa FeArchitectural Office: Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe / (Architect Adelia Sebastián - Architect Carreras Luis - Tech. Gonzalez Javier - Architect Batlle Casas Barbara - Basualdo Gonzalo - Tech. Grippaldi Bruno - Architect Soriano Sebastián)Architect(s) in charge: Architect Adelia SebastiánTechnical Support: Architect Guillermo Goddio - Architect Ramiro SosaConstruction Company: Cocyar S.A.Construction completion year: 2024Lot area: 5,000 m2Covered area: 402 m2Semi-covered area: 980 m2Project year: 2022Location: Vera, Province of Santa Fe, ArgentinaProgram: Institutional (Judicial Morgue)All images © Ramiro Sosa.All drawings © Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe.> via Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe

LAI #75: Generative AI vs. Agentic AI vs. AI Agents 0 like May 15, 2025 Share this post Author(s): Towards AI Editorial Team Originally published on Towards AI. Good morning, AI enthusiasts, This week’s issue dives into where the field is heading — beyond generation, toward autonomy and better error awareness. We’re starting with a breakdown of the increasingly fuzzy but important distinctions between Generative AI, Agentic AI, and AI Agents. Then we move into applied innovation: Microsoft’s GraphRAG, multimodal RAG systems using Cohere and Gemini, and a practical framework for predicting when your model is about to get something wrong. Also in the mix: DNNs vs. tree-based models for e-commerce ranking, a powerful Cursor.ai-like browser extension from the community, and this week’s poll on when vibes are enough — and when accuracy has to come first. Let’s get into it. — Louis-François Bouchard, Towards AI Co-founder & Head of Community Learn AI Together Community Section! Featured Community post from the Discord Retconned has built Sophon, an AI chat app that enhances your browsing experience by understanding and interacting with your tabs. With its intelligent composer, it can see the tabs you have open, allowing it to understand context and autofill forms, textboxes, or fields with a single click. It is a browser extension and completely free. Check it out here. Share your feedback in the thread and support a fellow community member! AI poll of the week! Most of you are doing vibe checks, and of course, for general tasks, the entire idea is for the AI to not feel like AI. But would you also rely on “vibes” for more quantitative tasks, where output accuracy matters more than output feel? Share in the thread, let’s decide together! Meme of the week! Meme shared by rucha8062 TAI Curated Section Article of the week How GraphRAG Works Step-by-Step By Mariana Avelino This blog explains Microsoft’s GraphRAG, a method that uses knowledge graphs for retrieval-augmented generation. Key detailed processes were graph creation, involving entity extraction, community partitioning, and querying, with distinct Local and Global Search functions. It outlined how entities, relationships, and community reports are generated and used for LLM response generation, including context management and semantic retrieval. Our must-read articles 1. Distill-then-Detect: A Practical Framework for Error-Aware Machine Learning By Shenggang Li The author presented a framework, “Distill-then-Detect,” to address prediction errors in machine learning models, particularly the “big misses” on critical data slices. This approach involves distilling a compact “student” model from a larger “teacher” model. It then quantifies teacher uncertainty and trains a meta-model to predict where the teacher is likely to err. By combining these signals into a risk score and applying conformal calibration for thresholding, the system effectively flags high-risk predictions. Experiments demonstrated that this method identified error-prone cases with balanced precision and recall while clustering these errors provided actionable insights into problematic data segments. 2. Beyond Text: Building Multimodal RAG Systems with Cohere and Gemini By Sridhar Sampath Traditional Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems often fail to process visual data. This article details a multimodal RAG system designed to overcome this limitation by understanding both text and images within documents. It utilizes Cohere’s multimodal embeddings to create unified vector representations from content like PDFs. Gemini 2.5 Flash then generates context-aware answers using either matched text or images, with FAISS managing vector indexing. It explains the system’s workflow, from document upload to answer generation, demonstrating its enhanced capability to extract information from charts, tables, and other visuals compared to text-only RAG. 3. Generative AI vs. Agentic AI vs. AI Agents: What Everyone Needs to Know By Poojan Vig The article clarified the distinct roles of Generative AI, Agentic AI, and AI Agents. It explained that Generative AI produces new content based on learned patterns. Agentic AI focuses on strategy, planning, and iteration towards a goal without continuous human intervention. AI Agents then sense their environment and execute actions in the digital or real world. Using a cooking analogy and examples like automated customer service, the piece illustrated how these AI types can operate independently or collaboratively to perform complex tasks. 4. DNNs vs Traditional Tree-Based Models for E-Commerce Ranking By Nikhilesh Pandey The author discusses the evolution of e-commerce ad ranking systems, detailing the shift from traditional tree-based models to Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). It outlines why tree-based models have reached their limits and how DNNs offer superior capabilities for handling complex data, personalization, and achieving better conversion rate (CVR) predictions. Using DoorDash Ads as a case study, the piece illustrates the iterative migration process, including defining baselines, optimizing model training and evaluation with techniques like data normalization and distributed processing, and addressing challenges such as the offline-online performance gap. If you are interested in publishing with Towards AI, check our guidelines and sign up. We will publish your work to our network if it meets our editorial policies and standards. Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor. Published via Towards AI Towards AI - Medium Share this post

Americans are living through interesting times, economically. The tariffs imposed, delayed, and frequently adjusted by the government have thrown household budgets into confusion. One thing that’s pretty certain is that the baseline tariffs applied to just about every country are likely to raise prices at the grocery store no matter what happens from here (prices could go up by about 3% overall).For families that are already struggling to make their grocery budgets work, this is unwelcome news, but there is one thing you can do right now—while prices are still largely unaffected by tariff chaos—to help mitigate the impact and protect you from future grocery inflation: start putting together a “tariff pantry.” This involves laying in a supply of nonperishable groceries to lock in today’s prices, and focusing on recipes and meals that will keep your grocery costs down in the coming months. Here's what to consider.How to plan out your tariff pantrySetting up a “tariff pantry” requires a little planning. “Take inventory first,” advises food blogger and bestselling cookbook author Kyndra Holley. “Know what you already have and make a list of essentials—stick to long-lasting pantry staples you actually use. Stock up gradually. Monitor prices and buy when it makes sense, not out of fear. Then set a budget and stick to it: Decide how much you can spend and avoid impulse buys or panic stockpiling. Buy what you already use when it’s discounted—don’t get lured by deals on items you wouldn’t otherwise use or need.”Holley also warns against relying too much on bulk-buying. “Bulk can save money—but only if you’ll use it,” she says. “Always check unit prices and shelf life, and don’t buy more than you can store safely. Use airtight containers and freeze what you can’t use quickly.”Changing your whole diet and meal-planning approach can help deal with tariff cost increases. “Go more plant-based,” Holley suggests. “Reduce meat and opt for beans, lentils, eggs, and grains. They’re cheaper, filling, and shelf-stable. One-pot, sheet-pan, and slow cooker meals use fewer ingredients and repurpose leftovers easily. And simplify recipes—use fewer, local ingredients. Stick to basic seasonings like garlic, onions, vinegar, and herbs.”Careful meal prepping can also reduce waste and make the most of items bought in bulk. “When you cook in bulk, you maximize every ingredient, stretching your dollars further,” says Laurie Hise, founder of the budgeting blog Passionate Penny Pincher. “Think buying meat in family packs, prepping meals in batches, and locking in today’s prices before more inflation sneaks in!”Hise also suggests broadening your grocery store choices. “Don’t put loyalty above savings! Make sure Aldi is in your store rotation, and scan weekly ads to get your must-haves for the cheapest. Eggs are almost always the cheapest there, they have a great Keto and Gluten Free selection, and you can buy meat for cheap on Wednesdays.”What to stock in a tariff pantryAlthough the blanket tariffs imposed will likely raise prices in general, the grocery items most likely to be affected by tariffs include fresh fruits and vegetables (the bulk of which are imported), coffee, cheese, olive oil, seafood, nuts, and candy. Aside from dodging future price hikes, you want to focus on items in those categories that have lengthy shelf lives and flexible uses. “Stock up on items that are both cost-effective, long-lasting, and versatile,” Holley advises, including:Grains and legumes, like rice, pasta, lentils, dried beans, and oats.Canned and frozen goods. “A variety of canned tomatoes (whole, diced, crushed) are perfect for sauces, soups, and stews,” Holley notes. “Canned vegetables and fruits can be stored for long periods, and frozen vegetables are often cheaper than fresh, and retain nutrients. And canned tuna or salmon are protein-rich and shelf-stable.”Baking ingredients like flour, sugar, yeast, baking soda, baking powder, and cornstarch. “Basic ingredients for a wide range of uses,” notes Holley.Shelf-stable dairy and dairy alternatives like powdered or evaporated milk can be rehydrated and used for baking, cooking, or even drinking, protecting you from price spikes on the fresh stuff.Oils and vinegars are likely to go up in price and are useful in cooking, dressing, and preserving food.Seasonings and spices—the U.S. imports a lot of spices from countries like India, China, and Peru, so they’re vulnerable to tariff price spikes. Laying in a supply of herbs and spices like salt and pepper, garlic and onion powder, paprika, chili powder, ginger, basil, parsley oregano, thyme, as well as soy sauce, hot sauce, mustard, and bouillon cubes will help ride out any disruptions or price hikes in the seasonings aisle.Nuts and seeds—Holley recommends adding a supply of peanut butter or almond butter. “They’re high in protein, and last a long time.”Coffee and tea. “Tea is a low-cost way to diversify your drink options,” notes Holley.Canned meats and proteins. “Canned chicken or Spam can be used in a variety of meals, especially in emergencies,” Holley notes. “And canned ham or sausage can add protein and are good for quick meals.”Building up a tariff pantry will pay off even if the impact of those tariffs is overestimated—as we all know too well, prices never go down.

Chips are a critical component of the AI industry. But new chips don’t hit the market with the same speed as new AI models and products do. Cognichip has a lofty goal of creating a foundational AI model that can help bring new chips to market faster. San Francisco-based Cognichip is working to build a physics-informed foundational AI model that can be used by semiconductor companies to speed up the development process of new chips. The company is calling this approach “artificial chip intelligence” and hopes it can help speed up chip production times by 50% and reduce the associated costs as well. This ambitious idea comes from semiconductor industry veteran Faraj Aalaei, who worked at various companies including Fujitsu Network Communications and Centillium Communications. Aalaei told TechCrunch that his company’s origin story begins back in 2015. At the time, Aalaei was a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which would often meet to talk about what was ailing their industry. He was growing concerned about what was happening in the semiconductor industry. He gave a presentation to the group about the stark drop in venture capital investing into semiconductor companies, which peaked at 200 deals a year in 2000, he said, and dropped to just one or two a year by 2015. “I essentially warned the other CEOs that this cannot be good for us,” Aalaei said. “It cannot be good for the semiconductor industry in America, and that what we needed to do is to fundamentally change things about it. If that trend continues, then we’re going to lose our competitiveness. We’re going to lose the energy that brings in new ideas to the table.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Considering how long it takes new chips to come to market, it’s not surprising these companies weren’t attracting venture investors, he said. Then he sat on the idea for almost a decade. He went on to found Candou Ventures in 2016, and through that fund got to watch the rise in AI startups. When he realized that advancements in generative AI had gotten to a point where it could be used to potentially help solve some of the semiconductor industry’s existent challenges, he decided to launch Cognichip in 2024. Cognichip has been operating in stealth ever since and has amassed a team of AI experts from places like Stanford, Google, and MIT to start building. Aalaei said it will take at least a few years to build the model to “ultimate performance” but said it should be able to help companies before it reaches that goal. “When we get to that point, this artificial chip intelligence, we will be building a system that can actually act like an expert engineer,” Aalaei said. “Once we achieve that vision, then you can actually get the same work done with a fraction of the people and in much, much shorter time.” Cognichip is now emerging from stealth with $33 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Lux Capital and Mayfield with participation from FPV and Candou Ventures. Navin Chaddha, a managing partner at Mayfield, told TechCrunch that when he was introduced to Aalaei, he felt they were “cut from the same cloth.” The vast majority of work in the semiconductor industry is still being done by humans; he said he thinks the timing is right to bring AI into the mix. “This is a major pain point, and the solution this company will provide will be a pain killer and not a vitamin for the semiconductor industry,” Chaddha said. “If you don’t have humans doing the job, can AI do it where there’s shortage of talent? Number one, great team, second, [they are] solving a real pain point in a massive, trillion-dollar industry.” Aalaei said that he hopes Cognichip will also be able to help democratize access to building chips so that more semiconductor companies can get started and land investment. Easier access also means that smaller companies can build more specific chips for specialized or smaller models, too, he said. All of this will depend on when, or if, the company can reach artificial chip intelligence. “What we’re doing is not some incremental change,” Aalaei said. “We’re not building an [electronic design automation] tool, we’re not trying to tweak the process a little bit. We’re trying to set a new goal for our industry and bring some major change.”

Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome. Most notably, TalkBack, Android’s screen reader, now lets you ask Gemini about what’s in images and what’s on your screen. Last year, Google brought Gemini’s capabilities to TalkBack to give people who are blind or have low vision access to AI-generated descriptions for images, even when Alt text isn’t available. Now, people can ask questions and get responses about their images. Image Credits:Google For example, if a friend texts you a photo a their new guitar, you can get a description of it and ask questions about the brand and color. In addition, you can now get descriptions and ask questions about your whole phone screen. So, if you’re shopping in an app, you can ask Gemini about the material of an item you’re interested in or if there is a discount available. Google also announced today that it’s updating Expressive Captions, Android’s real-time captions feature that uses AI to capture what someone says, and how they say it. Google says it’s aware that one of the ways people express themselves is by dragging out the sound of their words, which is why it has developed a new duration feature on Expressive Captions. Now, you’ll know if a sports announcer is calling out an “amaaazing shot” or when someone isn’t simply saying “no” but “nooooo.” You’ll also start to see new labels for sounds, such as when a person is whistling or clearing their throat. Image Credits:Google The update is rolling out in English in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia for devices running Android 15 and above. Google is also making it easier to access PDFs on Chrome. Up until now, you wouldn’t be able to use your screen reader to interact with a scanned PDF in your desktop Chrome browser. Now, Chrome automatically recognizes these types of PDFs, allowing you to highlight, copy, and search for text like any other page and use your screen reader to read them. This is thanks to the introduction of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Google says. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Plus, Page Zoom on Chrome on Android now lets you increase the size of the text you see without affecting the webpage layout. You can customize how much you want to zoom in and then choose to apply the preference to all of the pages you visit, or just certain ones. You can access this feature by tapping the three-dot menu in the top right corner of Chrome.

News flash: The Society6 Memorial Day Sale is officially here, offering much more than just pretty pictures. While the DTC brand is known for its framable prints, there’s also a surprisingly wide selection of home decor and accessories, from mid-century accents to artist-designed bedding collections, throw pillows, and even peel-and-stick wallpaper. For Memorial Day, the brand is offering up to 30% off sitewide between now and May 27, and you can take an additional 10% off sale items after May 22.Below, shop some of our favorite picks from the sale to brighten up your space.Our top picks from the Society6 Memorial Day sale:Best Art Print Deal: Floral Bouquet In Matisse Dance Vase by Lara Lee Meintjes, $40 $28Best Bedding Deal: Off-Set Stripe Brushed Cotton Sheet Set, $119 $95Best Furniture Deal: Abstract Artwork Sling Chair by EmcDesignLab, $175 $140Best Tabletop Deal: Scandinavian Doves Coasters by haleyum, $25 $20Best Throw Pillow Deal: The Serenity Throw Pillow by Joao Incerti, $35 $28Gingham Window Curtains by Pink Cloud (Set of 2)If you’re into cottagecore, consider these romantic gingham window curtains for dressing up your walls. Available in sheer and blackout versions, the barely-there blue is a delicate touch that won’t skew overly pastoral.Abstract Artwork Sling Chair by EMC Design LabThis collapsible sling chair with a sturdy wood frame is light enough to travel with you on all your beach trips or park days. The woven polyester seat can withstand splashes from your margarita so you can look forward to lounging in it summer after summer. It also offers three seat reclining positions for you to find your most comfortable perch.The Serenity Throw Pillow by Joao IncertiYou can never have too many throw pillows—especially when designs like this fun tiger print are in the mix. The indoor version is made with micro-twill fabric that is oh-so-soft while the outdoor version is weather and fade resistant so it’s made from polyester twill. Each pillow has a zipper closure, should you need to remove and spot clean.Society6 Off-Set Stripe Brushed Cotton Sheet SetWe know bedding like the back of our hand, so trust us when we say these sheets with a yellow-and-green stripe are not something you can find just anywhere. The pattern is printed on 100% brushed cotton that only gets softer after each wash. It can work equally well in a contemporary bedroom, or paired with florals for a maximalist feel.California Living Framed Art Print by Sisi And SebThis vintage auto print opposite a Joshua tree brings major west coast appeal—it’s even recommended in our article on where to buy affordable art . Each art print is completely customizable, you can get just the print if you have a frame you love, or select one of 13 options on the site, which include clean-looking walnut and maple, but also modern gold and black metal versions.Tiki Pink Throw Blanket by Sunshine CanteenThrow blankets, like throw pillows, are something you can collect and rotate—making this tan-and pink Tiki print add-to-cart-worthy. Use your imagination to decide if you’re seeing zebra stripes or palm leaves. (The underside is white, in case you want to switch into minimalist mode.) One thing’s for sure, the polyester sherpa fleece is so soft, you might have trouble leaving the couch.Retro Throw Pillow by Eyestigmatic DesignIf William Morris was living in the 1960s, he would have liked this bold floral pattern that still winks at the Arts and Crafts movement. The pattern is two-sided and you can choose from the square or rectangular version. Plus, there are the options for the micro-twill for interiors and weather-resistant poly-twill for the outdoors. Our advice: Get both and surround yourself in this bright garden print.Floral Bouquet in Matisse Dance Vase Framed Poster by Lara Lee MeintjesWhat do you get when you combine fine art with a modern interpretation? A gallery-worthy art print that you can actually afford. The Matisse blue is striking against the vibrant blooms that will surely uplift the mood of any room.Simplex Abstract Framed Poster by Dan Hobday ArtA black-and-white abstract print in a black frame can live with lots of different decor aesthetics. We’ve seen it liven up all-white interiors, and bring a modern sensibility to vintage floral wallpaper. Given the shape of the geometry, you can buy two and place them on a gallery wall, but one as a horizontal, the other as a vertical—a duality we think will add visual interest but still look cohesive.Paper Weaving Pattern #1 Serving Tray by Alisa GalitsynaSociety6 serving trays are crafted with bamboo and, therefore, quite sturdy. But the true star is the check print that will liven any cocktail party. Then again, just picture it on your duvet cover as you bask on Sundays with breakfast in bed.Wildflowers Cottagecore Table Runner by Show Me MarsHere’s a hosting hack: Add a table runner to the setting of your next soiree—it’s something small that will automatically elevate any dining experience. We love this crimson wildflower print because it’s a bold pop of color, but won’t take over the tablescape setup. Picture it with a set of glass candleholders and actual flowers in pretty vases.Scandinavian Doves Coasters by Haley Um (Set of 4)Doves are a universal sign of peace, which makes these an extra thoughtful hostess gift. The tulip border detail paired with the more geometric interior gives these a nice juxtaposition in patterns.Sleeping Woman in Stripes Art Print by Cocoon DesignBring the “unexpected red” theory to life with this cozy art print. The modernist visage embraces the everywoman who just wants to get into bed and nap—talk about art imitating life.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" The Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe has completed a morque designed with a horizontal line that aligns with the large flat roof in Vera, Province of Santa Fe, Argentina.Under a commodatum agreement with the Provincial Government, the Judicial Morgue of the Judiciary of Santa Fe is situated on a portion of the Regional Hospital premises in the city of Vera.Named Judicial Morgue for the City of Vera, given the particular location and how the general public views this kind of architectural program, the intervention's main goal was to create a modern area that invites approach rather than rejection—or even one that people using the building's adjacent services might not notice. For this reason, the building is discreetly hidden behind reachable embankments covered with natural vegetation, leaving the viewer with only a horizontal line that is in line with the large flat roof that encloses the reception area, office spaces, the actual morgue, and the perimeter of the intermediate galleries. Rooms facing the back of the concrete embankment or adjacent plots are prioritized from the inside.Even though the main structure is surrounded by the embankments, the building was positioned to be visible in its entirety from nearly every aspect due to the lot's proportions. Its conserved native forest, which is included into the concept, produces diverse experiences when walked about at ground level, through the pedestrian entry, or via the car access road. The deliberate image of the "fifth façade"—an abstraction made up of the entire roof structure, the vertical boundary along the street, the infrastructure areas, the vehicle access road, the perimeter lines of the embankments and pedestrian access—is given special attention.Wind, shadow, rain, sun, and vegetation all become protagonists, meticulously incorporated into the architectural concept, as environmental and climatic aspects were carefully studied in the creation of this unique program. The structure is arranged around galleries, which act as areas of transition between the outside and the inside and, more importantly, as sun control systems, which help to lessen the harsh environment of the area. Among other things, a Venturi tube at the pedestrian entrance circulates air to chill the inside and splits to cool the outside walls.Administrative offices, conference rooms, identification rooms, cold storage rooms, X-ray and picture interpretation rooms, inclusive locker rooms, autopsy rooms, loading/unloading garages, pathological waste storage, and a main hall and reception area are all part of the functional plan. An infrastructure equipment cluster that houses air conditioning condensers, refrigeration units, a chiller, a hydropneumatic tank, a generator, and an external guard room are examples of supporting spaces. These are surrounded by an exposed shell of reinforced concrete walls and roof and are situated outside the huge metal roof.The courtyard, the pedestrian entrance, and the encircling galleries are notable semi-covered areas. They all have enormous circular open skylights that let in rainwater or filtered sunlight, making the room feel cozy and inviting for both professionals and guests. A semicircular bench serves as a reflective seating space beneath the skylights. Similar to how the building is visually protected from the exterior by concrete embankments covered in vegetation and purposefully placed pedestrian openings away from the hospital, the interior is similarly protected by intermediate areas that are intended to lessen the proximity and animosity of the reinforced concrete envelope to the south. This is accomplished by paving a courtyard with loose river stones of various colors, which lessens the impression on the eye and permits future plants to grow in between the stones.The building's partially covered sections face the designated vehicle access road to the north, and vertical screens act as a physical barrier in front of the urban street's protected row of native trees that border the entrance. Using metal structures, sheet metal, circular-section tubes, and a reinforced concrete planter, the physical boundary between the lot and the street was given special design consideration. This creates an expressive, organic line that opens up urban sightlines and draws attention to the main gate and institutional signage.The autopsy room and its auxiliary spaces are the heart of a morgue, thus biosafety regulations and the best use of circulation and support rooms were taken into consideration when designing the spaces. To circulate air and safeguard the working staff, the facility has specifically built climate control systems (power capacity and unique filters). It has a digital X-ray machine, surgical-grade lighting, specialized storage equipment, and two cutting-edge stainless steel autopsy tables made by national suppliers. Filtered natural light is let in through micro-perforated metal panels, softening the space's clinical feel. The main views are of the north inner courtyard.The building's infrastructure includes a generator for continuous power supply, self-sufficient solar power, a single absorption pit and separate outputs for pre-treating liquid waste that eventually discharges into the sewer system, and connections to municipal water and electricity. Additionally, it has video surveillance, complete climate control throughout, and intrusion and fire alarm systems. Interlocking permeable pavers and intermediate chambers were used to address drainage and paving issues caused by the lengthy access road that connected the building to the city roadway.Aluminum window frames, gypsum rock walls, oxidized metal sheets for the galleries' and semi-covered areas' ceilings, flush-joint interior ceilings, exposed reinforced concrete for the external envelope, hermetically sealed double-glazing in specific geometries for the operational spaces, and reinforced concrete partitions covered in perforated and plain metal sheets are among the materials used in the building. At the site and car entrances, the vehicle access road has unique wood elements, precast stormwater drains, and articulated paving. The structure is decorated with polished 30x30 cm granite mosaic tiles, and the kitchens and bathrooms have custom black Brazilian granite countertops. Whenever feasible, national and local suppliers were used.All things considered, this project has presented a big challenge for the professionals in our office, but its completion allows us to keep trying new things in the future. By bringing compassion and respect to a function that is usually disregarded because of its negative implications, it enables us to "reconsider our relationship with the afterlife." In the end, it is a project that offers the balance of beauty and usefulness that is the ultimate aim of architecture by articulating and integrating spaces to make them livable and noticeable.Section AASection BBEast elevationWest elevationNorth elevationSouth elevationProject factsProject name: Judicial Morgue for the City of VeraClient: Judicial Branch of the Province of Santa FeArchitectural Office: Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe / (Architect Adelia Sebastián - Architect Carreras Luis - Tech. Gonzalez Javier - Architect Batlle Casas Barbara - Basualdo Gonzalo - Tech. Grippaldi Bruno - Architect Soriano Sebastián)Architect(s) in charge: Architect Adelia SebastiánTechnical Support: Architect Guillermo Goddio - Architect Ramiro SosaConstruction Company: Cocyar S.A.Construction completion year: 2024Lot area: 5,000 m2Covered area: 402 m2Semi-covered area: 980 m2Project year: 2022Location: Vera, Province of Santa Fe, ArgentinaProgram: Institutional (Judicial Morgue)All images © Ramiro Sosa.All drawings © Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe.> via Office of the Architects of the Judicial Branch of Santa Fe