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After Math: Flipping the Switch

It's Lites out for Nintendo

Nintendo wasn't the only company this week making headlines about switches. Facebook's poker playing AI turned the tables on some Texas Hold'em pros, Foxconn pulled the old switcheroo on the state of Wisconsin, and Luminar's new LiDAR is poised to turn the autonomous vehicle market on its ear.

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Foxconn's Wisconsin plant opens next May with fewer jobs than promised

When Foxconn and the Wisconsin state government agreed to open a production facility in the home of the Cheeseheads, the addition of 13,000 jobs was supposed to come with the new buildings. Psych, Foxconn is actually only bringing 1,500 jobs to the state, despite receiving $222 million in subsidies. But don't worry they've got a full 13 years to get those staffing numbers up to full strength.

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Harley-Davidson offers free charging for its electric motorcycle

Harley is flipping the power switch for its new LiveWire customers, offering to charge the electric motorcycles for free at any of its dealerships for the first two years. And given that you're shelling out 30 grand for the bike, they'd darn well better.

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Amazon plans to retrain one-third of US employees as automation grows

Yes, robots are coming to take your job. No, that doesn't mean you can't go find another one. Amazon announced this week that it plans to spend $700 million over the next six years to retrain 100,000 employees at risk of being made redundant by emerging automation systems.

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Luminar's cheap LiDAR could be a big boost for autonomous vehicles

Those fancy LiDAR rigs that you see on the tops of self-driving vehicles, those typically go for around $75,000 a pop. Even the newer generation of compact arrays -- a steal at 10 percent of the price -- will set you back $7,500. But this new system from Luminar only costs a grand to install in production vehicles, paving the way for more widespread adoption of autonomous driving functions.

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Facebook and CMU's poker AI beat five pros at once

Is there any game of skill or chance that machine learning systems can't mop the floor with us at? Short answer: no. Long answer: Yes, but only until the system has acquired a sufficiently robust training data set, then, no.

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Las Vegas autonomous shuttle crash happened due to lack of manual control

One hour. That's how long Las Vegas' autonomous bus system was able to operate in 2017 without getting into a wreck. Granted while the NTSB investigation found that the other vehicle had failed to stop at the light, the bus' design was also cited as a contributing factor due to the difficulties the attendant had in reaching the manual override switch.