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Audio+2Aug 30

Image: The Threshold Report/GPT Image 2

Caterpillar's voice repair assistant reaches technicians in the field

A technician working on a Caterpillar machine can now ask the Cat AI Assistant out loud for a repair procedure, talk through a fault, or identify the part needed for the job. Caterpillar says the assistant is in the hands of customers, operators, and technicians. The guidance arrives at the machine, without a trip back to the manuals or a separate system.

SOURCES · techcrunch.com
Robots+2Aug 30

Image: The Threshold Report/GPT Image 2

Meta has robots pressing power buttons in some data centers

Meta has installed a remotely triggered device in some of its data centers that physically presses power buttons to restart Mac Minis and other equipment, so a stuck machine can come back without sending anyone to the rack. The company is separately testing robots that could power-cycle servers and replace network cables. If those tests hold up, more complicated physical maintenance could follow.

SOURCES · arstechnica.com
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ImageAug 30

Image: theverge.com

Texas freezes state spending on new Flock license-plate cameras

Flock's AI-enabled license-plate cameras, which photograph and log passing vehicles, will not be bought with Texas state money for now; Governor Greg Abbott froze the spending. The freeze came after scrutiny of the company's surveillance practices and of what the state had reportedly spent on the cameras. State-funded expansion of the network is on hold, and Texas now sits inside a wider backlash over how automated surveillance gets purchased and used.

Negative - Texas unilaterally halted further purchases of Flock’s AI camera systems rather than establishing deployment safeguards with the company.
SOURCES · theverge.com

Other News

TextAug 28

Image: theverge.com

Music publishers sue Anthropic over lyrics and books used in training

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers filed suit in California on Aug. 28 against Anthropic and its cofounders. They allege that copyrighted lyrics, books, and other works were acquired through scraping, downloads, and torrenting in order to train Claude. The complaint goes at how training material was obtained, a question that carries legal exposure and cost for anyone building models on large collected datasets.

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Announced or reported, but not yet real or available.

Compute & InfraAug 30

SpaceX is building a Texas foundry for gas turbine blades

Waiting on: Construction - the Bastrop foundry is still being built and has not begun casting parts.