The growing number of smart devices supporting bandwidth-intensive and latency-sensitive applications, such as real-time video analytics, smart sensing, Extended Reality (XR), etc., necessitates reliable wireless connectivity in indoor environments. In such environments, accurate design of Radio Environment Maps (REMs) enables adaptive wireless network planning and optimization of Access Point (AP) placement. However, generating realistic REMs remains difficult due to the variability of indoor environments and the limitations of existing modeling approaches, which often rely on simplified layouts or fully synthetic data. These challenges are further amplified by the adoption of next-generation Wi-Fi standards, which operate at higher frequencies and suffer from limited range and wall penetration. To support the efforts in addressing these challenges, we collected a dataset that combines high-resolution 3D LiDAR scans with Wi-Fi RSSI measurements collected across 20 setups in a multi-room indoor environment. The dataset includes two measurement scenarios, the first without human presence in the environment, and the second with human presence, enabling the development and validation of REM estimation models that incorporate physical geometry and environmental dynamics. The described dataset supports research in data-driven wireless modeling and the development of high-capacity indoor communication networks.

On a sunny day in San Francisco, along the city's waterfront, families dived into the wacky world of artificial intelligence inside the Exploratorium museum. Visitors made shadow puppets for AI to identify, used AI to generate songs, asked chatbots questions and faced off with AI in a game in which players tried to draw images that only humans would recognize. A giant robot hand moved around and people peered into a video game chip. They jotted down their hopes and worries about AI on cards displayed in the museum. Hope: AI will cure cancer.

Office Assistant Robots (OARs) offer a promising solution to proactively provide in-situ support to enhance employee well-being and productivity in office spaces. We introduce OfficeMate, a social OAR designed to assist with practical tasks, foster social interaction, and promote health and well-being. Through a pilot evaluation with seven participants in an office environment, we found that users see potential in OARs for reducing stress and promoting healthy habits and value the robot's ability to provide companionship and physical activity reminders in the office space. However, concerns regarding privacy, communication, and the robot's interaction timing were also raised. The feedback highlights the need to carefully consider the robot's appearance and behaviour to ensure it enhances user experience and aligns with office social norms. We believe these insights will better inform the development of adaptive, intelligent OAR systems for future office space integration.

Following a final hearing on its bankruptcy plan Thursday morning, the coworking pioneer will have fewer locations, a new influx of capital, and 4 billion in debt wiped from its books. In a packed courtroom in Newark, New Jersey, Judge John Sherwood approved WeWork's restructuring plan. WeWork expects to finally exit bankruptcy in mid-June. The plan also staved off a bid by WeWork's controversial founder Adam Neumann, who had sought to buy back the company he founded before he was infamously ousted. WeWork's clean slate will coincide with a new era of working, one in which office workers have pushed back against returning to offices full-time.

In September, a "bespoke AI nutrition" store opened in beleaguered downtown San Francisco to much fanfare, promising smoothie concoctions generated by AI and a much-needed boost to the area. Less than two months later, it has seemingly closed without explanation. BetterBlends advertised "Your Smoothie, powered by AI" and received positive press upon its opening, ginning up excitement for a new business and a novel use of artificial intelligence. Its AI model would take customer orders and preferences to generate a smoothie recipe that would then be blended by hand by co-founders Michael Parlato and Clayton Reynolds, who worked in the shop. But now the storefront sits empty. On Friday 20 October, the locked doors to BetterBlends featured a sign that read "temporarily closed", stating the shop would reopen in one hour – but sources in the neighborhood said the storefront had been closed for more than three weeks.

The techies are at it again--only this time, they're not looking for kombucha on tap or Patagonia vests, but all-inclusive "hacker houses" in Hayes Valley. Artificial intelligence workers are now forming co-living and coworking communities, where like-minded founders and developers can eat, sleep and breathe their work. These communities are often operated out of historic Victorians near Alamo Square, just a stone's throw from Souvla and a Cotopaxi outlet. The hacker house craze has grown quickly in recent months, so much so that some in the industry are now calling the neighborhood around them "Cerebral Valley." With catchy community names like Genesis House (or its Hillsborough iteration, Neogenesis House) and an ethos that promises to optimize work via play, these communities might sound like just another Silicon Valley fad.

Not so long ago it may have seemed more like a futuristic vision of the workplace – or a hospital. But the hands-free door handles, self-cleaning surfaces, antimicrobial paint, air-monitoring display tools, UV light disinfection robots, and 135 other measures at an office block in Bucharest are here to stay, say the creators behind what they are touting as one of the world's most virus-resilient workplaces, which they hope will become the new normal in office design. Entering H3, a five-storey building in a western neighbourhood of the Romanian capital, is like learning the steps to a new dance. A flick of the wrist opens the door, and a red line marks the spot at which to stand from where a thermal body camera 2 metres away scans arrivals for signs of fever. Those who are "green-lighted" can follow the tracks to the self-clean lift, step on one of two foot pads and be transported through the building, safe in the knowledge that a UV lighting disinfection system installed in the ventilation shafts is keeping them infection-free between floors. Anyone whose head flashes red on the screen, however, is whisked away by a plastic-gloved "immune steward" into a nearby quarantine room: a glass box with a panic button and its own internal ventilation system shut off from the rest of the building.

Video has become a perfect communication, remote consulting, collaboration, entertainment, and even monitoring and control tool for companies from different business sectors as well as public institutions. Companies have even started to use video as a data collection tool within robotic process automation (RPA), which has made this type of content a valuable asset. Let me emphasize this idea: Every business, whether it's a factory, a marketing agency or a restaurant, generates an enormous amount of video content today. Using video analytics, businesses can extract the most valuable data out of enormous amounts of video and preserve this information instead of terabytes of video. It is possible to track any spatial/temporal parameters and get instant notifications about discrepancies and violations.

It's no surprise that AI has a carbon footprint, which refers to the amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane, primarily) that producing and consuming AI releases into the atmosphere. In fact, training AI models requires so much computing power, some researchers have argued that the environmental costs outweigh the benefits. However, I believe they've not only underestimated the benefits of AI, but also overlooked the many ways that model training is becoming more efficient. Greenhouse gases are what economists refer to as an "externality" -- a cost borne inadvertently by society at large, such as through the adverse impact of global warming, but inflicted on us all by private participants who have little incentive to refrain from the offending activity. Typically, public utilities emit these gases when they burn fossil fuels in order to generate electricity that powers the data centers, server farms, and other computing platforms upon which AI runs. During the past few years, AI has been unfairly stigmatized as a major contributor to global warming, owing to what some observers regard as its inordinate consumption of energy in the process of model training.

The cubicle is making a comeback. As thousands of companies contemplate restarting operations, executives are weighing how best to reconfigure workspaces that have, by and large, been designed to minimize cost and foster the face-to-face interactions that can spread the deadly coronavirus. Some companies are looking at high-tech approaches to enforce social distancing and track interactions, with location-monitoring apps and badges, artificial intelligence surveillance cameras, and high-tech health checks. Other innovations will be simpler: stickers to enforce 6 feet of distance between coworkers; staggered shifts that allow for more spacing; more regular cleanings; and of course oodles of hand sanitizer. But one of the most important innovations may turn out to be cardboard or plastic dividers that turn open-plan offices into something more reminiscent of the 1980s.