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How Robotics and AI are Revolutionizing Recycling Through Amazon’s Most Recent Climate Pledge Fund Investment

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How Robotics and AI are Revolutionizing Recycling Through Amazon's Most Recent Climate Pledge Fund Investment

Glacier is an AI and robotics startup that is assisting the recycling sector in its efforts to create a waste-free society. Glacier was recently invested in by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund as part of our continuous commitment to promote female-led businesses and entrepreneurs in the climate tech space. Areeb Malik and Rebecca Hu co-founded Glacier, a company that employs AI-powered robots to automate recyclables sorting and gather real-time data on recycling streams for consumer brands and recycling companies. In an effort to close the funding gap for women in climate tech, Amazon’s corporate venture capital fund, The Climate Pledge Fund, first announced its $53 million Female Founder Initiative in 2022. The fund invests in climate tech companies to help accelerate Amazon’s path to meet the commitments of The Climate Pledge. Glacier is the second business to receive funding from The Climate Pledge Fund under the leadership of a female CEO.

Glacier was created by Hu and Malik in an effort to address the climate catastrophe. “After researching a variety of climate solutions, we discovered that applying novel advances in AI and robotic automation to help the recycling industry run more efficiently is a powerful way to reduce waste, which has a direct link to reducing carbon emissions,” said Hu.

Even though recycling has a lot of potential to reduce global warming, only 21% of household recyclables are recycled in the United States today, frequently as a result of inadequate infrastructure for recycling. “In the United States alone, almost 70 million tons of recycling are processed each year. Even though this is already a huge project, Malik stated, “We can recover so much more material if we develop accessible automation processes and then scale them across our nation’s recycling infrastructure.” “Glacier is acting in this manner.” In order to help keep precious commodities like metals and plastics out of landfills and the ocean, Glacier’s robots increase sorting and recycling rates.

Two key technologies are combined in Glacier’s approach to recycling innovation. Glacier’s in-house artificial intelligence model can instantly recognize over thirty different recyclable material types, ranging from as wide as PET plastic to as specific as a toothpaste tube. The AI and Glacier’s unique robotic design work together to provide reliable recyclable sorting power at an affordable deployment cost.

Glacier’s sorting robots are not the only thing that could have an impact on the circular economy. “We’re constantly looking for ways to improve recycling, and developing robots is just the first step,” said Malik. Glacier’s AI is generating a recycling data set to help recycling facilities and brands make better-informed decisions. “Our recycling AI is a powerful tool for everyone in the circular economy, and it couldn’t come at a more important time,” said Hu. “As we see mounting legislative, economic, and social pressure to recycle better, brands are using our data to measure and improve how their packaging is being recycled, while recycling facilities are using our data to improve their operations and rescue more recyclables from landfill. We’re thrilled to be collaborating with a circular economy leader like Amazon so that we can accelerate our mission to end waste.”

The investor in Glacier was led by Phoebe Wang, an investment partner of The Climate Pledge Fund. Luna Yu, the first female CEO to receive funding from the Female Founder Initiative, launched Genecis, a bioplastics company that Wang handled The Climate Pledge Fund’s investment in last year. “We’ve made significant progress, but women still face hidden barriers and an invisible glass ceiling, especially in the startup and venture capital space,” said Wang. “We must invest in women like Rebecca who are pioneering innovative technology to address the climate crisis. Our goal is to promote greater support for these female tech founders and help them succeed.” By funding companies like Glacier and Genecis, Amazon hopes to send a clear signal to the venture industry and encourage broader financial support for more female climate-tech founders.

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Apple’s own 5G modem-equipped iPhone SE 4 is “confirmed” to launch in March

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Tom O’Malley, an analyst at Barclays, recently visited Asia with his colleagues to speak with suppliers and makers of electronics. The analysts said they had “confirmed” that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is scheduled to launch near the end of the first quarter next year in a research note they released this week that outlines the main conclusions from the trip. That timeline implies that the next iPhone SE will be unveiled in March, similar to when the present model was unveiled in 2022, in keeping with earlier rumors.

The rumored features of the fourth-generation iPhone SE include a 6.1-inch OLED display, Face ID, a newer A-series chip, a USB-C port, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 8GB of RAM to enable Apple Intelligence support, and the previously mentioned Apple-designed 5G modem. The SE is anticipated to have a similar design to the base iPhone 14.

Since 2018, Apple is said to have been developing its own 5G modem for iPhones, a move that will let it lessen and eventually do away with its reliance on Qualcomm. With Qualcomm’s 5G modem supply arrangement for iPhone launches extended through 2026 earlier this year, Apple still has plenty of time to finish switching to its own modem. In addition to the fourth-generation iPhone SE, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier stated that the so-called “iPhone 17 Air” would come with a 5G modem that was created by Apple.

Whether Apple’s initial 5G modem would offer any advantages to consumers over Qualcomm’s modems, such quicker speeds, is uncertain.

Qualcomm was sued by Apple in 2017 for anticompetitive behavior and $1 billion in unpaid royalties. In 2019, Apple purchased the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business after the two firms reached a settlement in the dispute. Apple was able to support its development by acquiring a portfolio of patents relating to cellular technology. It appears that we will eventually be able to enjoy the results of our effort in four more months.

On March 8, 2022, Apple made the announcement of the third-generation iPhone SE online. With antiquated features like a Touch ID button, a Lightning port, and large bezels surrounding the screen, the handset resembles the iPhone 8. The iPhone SE presently retails for $429 in the United States, but the new model may see a price increase of at least a little.

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Google is said to be discontinuing the Pixel Tablet 2 and may be leaving the market once more

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Google terminated the development of the Pixel Tablet 3 yesterday, according to Android Headlines, even before a second-generation model was announced. The second-generation Pixel Tablet has actually been canceled, according to the report. This means that the gadget that was released last year will likely be a one-off, and Google is abandoning the tablet market for the second time in just over five years.

If accurate, the report indicates that Google has determined that it is not worth investing more money in a follow-up because of the dismal sales of the Pixel Tablet. Rumors of a keyboard accessory and more functionality for the now-defunct project surfaced as recently as last week.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google’s Nest subsidiary may abandon its plans for large-screen products in favor of developing technologies like the Nest Hub and Hub Max rather than standalone tablets.

Google has always had difficulty making a significant impact in the tablet market and creating a competitor that can match Apple’s iPad in terms of sales and general performance, not helped in the least by its inconsistent approach. Even though the hardware was good, it never really fought back after getting off to a promising start with the Nexus 7 eons ago. Another problem that has hampered Google’s efforts is that Android significantly trails iPadOS in terms of the quantity of third-party apps that are tablet-optimized.

After the Pixel Slate received tremendously unfavorable reviews, the firm first declared that it was finished producing tablets in 2019. Two tablets that were still in development at the time were discarded.

By 2022, however, Google had altered its mind and declared that a tablet was being developed by its Pixel hardware team. The $499 Pixel Tablet was the final version of the gadget, which came with a speaker dock that the tablet could magnetically connect to. (Google would subsequently charge $399 for the tablet alone.)

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Windows 11 PCs with Arm Processors now have an Official ISO for Clean Installations

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Power users occasionally prefer to start over when they acquire a new computer, so they follow the pro-gamers’ advice and reinstall Windows using a brand-new ISO image that comes straight from Microsoft and is free of bloatware and needlessly complex “driver management programs.” Up until recently, the new Snapdragon laptops’ more specialized version of Windows 11 didn’t support that.

The Windows 11 build on these new laptops is unusual because of the Arm64-based hardware, which differs from the typical x86 and x64 innards found in most laptops and desktops. Microsoft has finally released a disk image (or ISO file) for these devices after several months of waiting. To perform a direct reinstallation or make a bootable flash drive for a different device, you may now download it straight from Microsoft’s website. It is identical to the installation media utility that is currently available.

Be aware that there may be some glitches if you use this method for a fresh install. Compared to previous designs, the Snapdragon X system-on-a-chip has a lot fewer hardware variables, but because it’s so new, Windows Update might not include all the necessary components. You may need to use an Ethernet connection or the old-fashioned sneakernet to manually load drivers from another computer. You may also need to do some Googling to locate all the files you require for that.

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