Hasta La Gadget!

Cassie, a bipedal robot that’s all legs, has successfully ran five kilometers without having a tether and on a single charge. The machine serves as the basis for Agility Robotics’ delivery robot Digit, as TechCrunch notes, though you may also remember it for “blindly” navigating a set of stairs. Oregon State University engineers were able to train Cassie in a simulator to give it the capability to go up and down a flight of stairs without the use of cameras or LIDAR. Now, engineers from the same team were able to train Cassie to run using a deep reinforcement learning algorithm.

According to the team, Cassie teaching itself using the technique gave it the capability to stay upright without a tether by shifting its balance while running. The robot had to learn to make infinite subtle adjustments to be able to accomplish the feat. Yesh Godse, an undergrad from the OSU Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, explained: “Deep reinforcement learning is a powerful method in AI that opens up skills like running, skipping and walking up and down stairs.”

The team first tested Cassie’s capability by having it run on turn for five kilometers, which it finished with a time of 43 minutes and 49 seconds. Cassie finished its run across the OSU campus in 53 minutes, 3 seconds — it took a bit longer, because it included six-and-a-half minutes of dealing with technical issues. The robot fell once due to a computer overheating and then again after it executed a turn too quickly. Jeremy Dao, another team member from the lab, though, said they were able to “reach the limits of the hardware and show what it can do.” The work the team does will help expand the understanding of legged locomotion and could help make bipedal robots become more common in the future.

“This is what happens to people who tell the truth in Trump’s America,” said officer Michael Fanone.

The attack occurred during a screening of the horror-action film “The Forever Purge.”

At the start of June, Vivaldi released its 4.0 update, which added features like a translation tool to the privacy-focused browser. Its new 4.1 update is a smaller release but still adds a handful of handy features, including a new way to organize tabs.

Like Chrome, Vivaldi allows you to group multiple tabs to restore some semblance of order to your tab bar. In Vivaldi, those groups are called stacks. Before 4.1, you had two ways of using them. You could opt for either the compact view or the two-level one. In the latter case, the browser adds a bar that displays the tabs you have in that stack. The compact view, by contrast, only hints at the number of websites you have pinned to the same group.

Vivaldi

The new “Accordion” stacks Vivaldi is introducing today give you a third option that is something of a compromise between its two siblings. The icon that represents the group will automatically expand when you click on it. Instead of on a second bar, you’ll see all the included tabs to the right of that icon. In that way, you can get context about your tabs without them taking up an entire extra element of the interface.

The other major feature the company is adding with 4.1 is called command chains. In Vivaldi, you can press “F2” (or “Command E” on Mac) to bring up a command-line interface, allowing you to quickly access most features without digging through the menu for the relevant option. Command chains allow you to group multiple actions and assign a name to them. Typing the name of the chain in the command interface will execute the included actions in a sequence. With more than 200 actions available, you have a lot of flexibility. For instance, you can create one that enables both fullscreen and reading modes at the same time. You can also assign the sequences you make to a custom keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture.

Outside of those features, 4.1 adds a timer in reader view that estimates how long it should take you to work your way through an article. Lastly, the browser’s Windows client will now install new features in the background automatically. There’s an option to turn off “silent updates” in the settings menu. You can try Vivaldi 4.1 today.

“Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement.