Wer nicht in Server-GPUs investieren, aber trotzdem große Sprachmodelle selbst betreiben will, findet in Unified-Memory-Workstations eine bezahlbare Alternative. iX zeigt, wie sich Geräte aus dem AMD-, Nvidia- und Apple-Ökosystem schlagen.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is increasingly adopted in the aerospace industry, as benefits like resource efficiency are complemented by distributed manufacturing possibilities that enhance supply chain resilience. However, replacing con ventional, established manufacturing methods with Laser Powder Bed Fusion in a highly regulated domain such as civil aviation comes at the price of increased requirements and thus costs for certification and quality assurance, which limit the attractiveness of AM. This paper presents a new data-based certification platform using Machine Learning (ML), a subdomain of artificial intelligence (AI), to enable faster and more cost-efficient design and manufacturing approval for additively manufactured aircraft components. The platform connects all relevant stakeholders and guides them through the certification process. As data sharing across different stakeholders and ML applications are central to the platform, a data governance concept aligned with European legislation, based on project-specific closed groups comprising direct supplier-customer relationships was developed. In addition, a compatible platform business model is described, presenting the roles of stakeholders and their respective value contributions. To this end, a deep dive into the landscape of current certification approaches and requirements was conducted and the impact of AM and the general use of AI on aircraft component certification was evaluated from technical, regulatory, legal, and economic perspectives

The integration of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) principles with Industry 4.0 technologies offers an effective way to improve operational performance in modern manufacturing environments. This case study presents the systematic application of LSS within an Industry 4.0 manufacturing laboratory, employing the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) framework to identify and eliminate inefficiencies. In a context dominated by automation, cyber-physical systems, and data-driven decision making, the study addresses persistent challenges including inaccurate sensor readings, limited user knowledge of advanced systems, and suboptimal material storage configurations. Through a combination of statistical analysis, root-cause identification, and iterative process redesign, the intervention resulted in measurable improvements in process reliability, user experience, and overall workflow efficiency. The findings highlight how LSS can serve as an effective bridge between traditional continuous-improvement methodologies and digitalized manufacturing operations. Moreover, the outcomes position the integration of LSS as a foundational enabler for Industry 5.0, where human-centricity, resilience, and sustainability will increasingly shape manufacturing system design.

We investigate the effectiveness of anti-phishing support systems through a quantitative study involving 453 participants. To this end, we developed a tool that allows participants to immerse themselves in a realistic setting, tasked with classifying emails as either phishing or legitimate, while being assisted by support systems. Despite the prevalence of support systems in webmailers and email clients, our results indicate no significant difference in correctly assessing emails of varying difficulty between these systems and the control group. We found a minor negative effect of the support system that uses tooltips compared to other support systems. In the subsequent survey, we found that the support systems are appreciated and considered helpful by users, as supported by the results of the UEQ-S, even if they have no observable effect. Email context, such as the contact list, as well as hovering over the links, had stronger effects on the classification than the tested support systems. 

Täglich hört man von der angeblich unausweichlichen Notwendigkeit eines Social-Media-Verbotes für Minderjährige. Das scheint weitgehender gesellschaftlicher Konsens zu sein. Einige wichtige Fragen werden dazu aber nicht gestellt: Was ist mit den Eltern?  Und warum eigentlich nur für Minderjährige?

Accurate and timely forecasts of road surface conditions are crucial for efficient winter maintenance, enhanced traffic safety, and the optimized use of de-icing agents. Road surface phenomena, in complex fields present challenges to traditional forecasting methods due to their nonlinear and localized nature. This study presents a machine learning framework predicting real-time road states (dry, wet, icy, snowy) across Bavaria, Germany. It integrates data from over 516 Road Weather Stations (RWS), thermal measurements from winter maintenance vehicles, and elevation data from the Open Elevation API. Data undergoes temporal alignment, spatial interpolation, and missing-value imputation. Decision Trees form the core model for interpretability and nonlinear pattern handling. Each RWS employs a localized model, while a generalized version covers unmonitored roads via spatial adjustments. With over 85% accuracy, the system facilitates dynamic winter maintenance and minimizes resource waste. Cyber-physical in smart mobility and transportation networks support improved real-time hazard responses. This approach shows how scalable infrastructure can be made resilient using machine learning.

This paper presents a low-complexity, open-source platform designed to empower small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the premium business to business (B2B) packaging industry with advanced digital capabilities for product personalization and rapid design visualization. Addressing the sector’s persistent barriers such as limited IT resources, manual workflows, and lack of structured supplier data access, the proposed system integrates dynamic web scraping for automated supplier data acquisition with real-time image processing for printable area detection on packaging components, particularly bottles. Leveraging open-source tools like Beautiful Soup, OpenCV, and Shapely, the platform eliminates reliance on time-intensive manual integration and supports agile, data-driven design workflows. The development process is guided by human-centered design principles to ensure usability and alignment with SME operational realities. Results demonstrate that this approach significantly streamlines catalog management and design preparation, offering a scalable pathway for SMEs to achieve digital transformation and maintain competitive differentiation in an increasingly digitalized packaging market.

Täglich hört man von der angeblich unausweichlichen Notwendigkeit eines Social-Media-Verbotes für Minderjährige. Das scheint weitgehender gesellschaftlicher Konsens zu sein. Einige wichtige Fragen werden dazu aber nicht gestellt: Was ist mit den Eltern?  Und warum eigentlich nur für Minderjährige?

We present SITUATE, a novel dataset designed for training and evaluating Vision Language Models on counting tasks with spatial constraints. The dataset bridges the gap between simple 2D datasets like VLMCountBench and often ambiguous real-life datasets like TallyQA, which lack control over occlusions and spatial composition. Experiments show that our dataset helps to improve generalization for out-of-distribution images, since a finetune of Qwen VL 2.5 7B on SITUATE improves accuracy on the Pixmo count test data, but not vice versa. We cross validate this by comparing the model performance across established other counting benchmarks and against an equally sized fine-tuning set derived from Pixmo count.