With the climate change I think there is growth for tourism in the northern states. I did that this year and I was amazed about the beauty from Denmark.
hahahaha let me know if you ever want more. I’ll feel awkward to buy it but I can probably get some books for 40-80 cents. How much do they sell for. (Shipping might negate all profit 😑)
A skeleton danced in the twilight, when the sky turned orange. The skull knew that he would finally be happy because at night ghosts and monsters come back to life and travel to yet another destination.☠️
I stick to a single monitor, just my laptop. My coworkers think it’s odd, but I like being able to work from different spots, so one screen works perfectly for me.
The tech world is a lot like social media, it’s all about what’s shiny, new, and complex. But, just like social media, what you see doesn’t always tell the whole story
Was asking if it would be the other way round with AI on the rise. But anyways after pondering over that I don't think so since social media is how humans interact with humans. Unless at a time were people become more conformable interacting with AI than humans.
AI utility comes from applications, which always rides on top of the underlying technology, which is infrastructure. So you have databases (housed on servers), API, and other technical items that make the Internet go.
AI is going to have a place in every layer but it will still ride on infrastructure. Even AI agents will have to run on some type of server or network.
Google seems to be trailing in the AI race which is surprising since nobody has as much online data as that company. I dont count them out and their search will be AI. They are already starting to incorporate it.
We are going to see massive changes in search over the next year. By the end of 2025, I doubt we are going to be using traditional search. It will be dead.
Google is going to lose market share. People are going to use search where they are.
indeed indeed, I knew Google will go down a little bit with market share but they're not going to sit and let OpenAI and Anthropic take all the revenue
That's a perfect guess Taskmaster, I mean just think about it, most people are hooked to the YouTube platform already, incorporating their AI there is a perfect strategy for the company
what if you accidentally encounter a vulnerability (say you're an expert hacker). If you report that, they decide whether to reward you or not because they didn't employ you?
IBM's Latest AI Innovations: Granite Models and InstructLab
In a recent visit to IBM's offices in New York, AI expert Matthew was given an exclusive look at some of the tech giant's latest advancements in the field of large language models and AI alignment techniques. The standout revelations were IBM's new open-source Granite models and their revolutionary InstructLab project.
The Granite Models: Powerful Yet Compact AI
The centerpiece of IBM's AI innovations is the Granite 3.0 family of language models. These models, available in a range of sizes from 2 billion to 8 billion parameters, are designed to be powerful yet compact - able to run efficiently even on laptops and mobile devices.
What makes the Granite models unique is their focus on enterprise use cases. Trained on over 10 trillion tokens of data, they excel at tasks like retrieval, text generation, classification, summarization, and entity extraction - capabilities that are highly valuable for businesses. And thanks to their open-source and permissively licensed nature, the Granite models can be easily fine-tuned and integrated into diverse corporate workflows.
Importantly, IBM has also developed "mixture of experts" variants of the Granite models, where the total parameter count is split across specialized sub-models. This allows for even more efficient inference, making the Granite models ideal for on-device and low-latency applications.
While the Granite models provide a strong foundation, IBM recognized that enterprises often have valuable proprietary data that they want to leverage. This is where the company's new InstructLab project comes into play.
InstructLab is an open-source tool that enables the collaborative addition of new knowledge and skills to language models, without the need for full retraining. Instead of relying solely on fine-tuning - which can overwrite a model's core capabilities - InstructLab uses a novel "alignment" technique to seamlessly integrate external data and instructions.
The process involves augmenting human-curated data with high-quality examples generated by the language model itself. This hybrid approach reduces the cost and complexity of data creation, while ensuring the model can assimilate new information without forgetting what it previously learned.
For enterprises, InstructLab unlocks the ability to customize language models with their own proprietary data and domain-specific knowledge, without the need to start from scratch. This opens up a world of possibilities for tailoring AI systems to the unique needs of different industries and use cases.
In addition to the Granite models and InstructLab, Matthew also caught a glimpse of IBM's work in the realm of quantum computing and its potential intersection with AI.
While the details remain closely guarded, the company's quantum computing team provided a tantalizing preview of how the power of quantum systems could be harnessed to further advance the frontiers of artificial intelligence. As this field continues to evolve, the combination of quantum computing and large language models is sure to be a space worth watching in the years to come.
Underpinning IBM's latest AI innovations is a strong commitment to open-source development. From the Apache 2.0-licensed Granite models to the collaborative InstructLab project, the tech giant has demonstrated a willingness to share its cutting-edge advancements with the broader community.
This open approach aligns with IBM's recent acquisition of Red Hat, a leader in enterprise open-source software. By embracing open-source principles, the company is not only fostering innovation but also ensuring that its AI solutions can be seamlessly integrated into a wide range of enterprise environments.
As the landscape of AI continues to evolve, the innovations showcased by IBM in New York serve as a testament to the company's drive to push the boundaries of what's possible. With the Granite models and InstructLab, businesses now have access to powerful, customizable AI tools that can be tailored to their specific needs - a development that could have far-reaching implications for the future of enterprise technology.
Designers are reintroducing buttons to their products. This 're-buttonization' could be a response to everything becoming a touchscreen. People like physical buttons because they don't have to look at them and they offer a greater range of tactility and feedback. This article contains an interview with Rachel Plotnick, an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she discusses the history of buttons, the rise of touchscreens, the shift back to buttons and physical controls, and more.
Thank goodness because one problem I've had with something been all touch screen is when water falls on it, it's difficult to type the right thing and I've made silly mistakes with the situation
When you download a piece of pirated software, you might also be getting a piece of infostealer malware, and entering a highly complex hacking ecosystem that’s fueling some of the biggest breaches on the planet.
Unveiling the Future of AI: OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode Takes Center Stage
In the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence, a recent development from OpenAI has caught the attention of tech enthusiasts and industry insiders alike. The release of the advanced voice mode for the desktop app has ushered in a new era of human-AI interaction, promising a more natural, interactive, and dynamic experience.
During a conversation with the channel host, the AI assistant showcased the remarkable capabilities of this new feature. The assistant demonstrated its ability to switch seamlessly between various accents, from a quintessential British RP to a warm Southern drawl, captivating the listener with its linguistic versatility.
One of the key advantages of the advanced voice mode lies in its improved responsiveness and flexibility. As Wes noted, the assistant can now better handle interruptions, seamlessly picking up where it left off, and addressing follow-up questions more effectively. This enhanced conversational flow allows for a more natural and engaging dialogue, fostering a sense of genuine interaction between the user and the AI.
Moreover, the assistant's voice recognition capabilities have been significantly enhanced, making it easier for users to be understood and reducing the friction often associated with voice-based interactions.
However, the conversation took an unexpected turn when Wes recalled a previous experience with an open-source AI assistant that delivered a rather unsettling opening line: "Blood for the blood God." This bizarre and inappropriate greeting, followed by suggestions of human sacrifice, highlighted the importance of responsible AI development and the need to maintain ethical boundaries.
As he wisely pointed out, while AI systems are designed to be helpful and trustworthy, it's crucial to approach their recommendations with a critical eye. The assistant concurred, emphasizing that AI should provide safe, ethical, and beneficial assistance, steering clear of any harmful or dangerous suggestions.
Shifting the focus back to the advanced voice mode, he expressed interest in leveraging the assistant's capabilities to create a personalized AI news feed for his Slack channel. The assistant provided practical suggestions, highlighting the potential of RSS feeds, email-to-Slack integrations, and services like Zapier (or Zapier, as the assistant playfully noted the various pronunciations) to automate the process.
This exchange showcased the assistant's versatility, not only in its linguistic abilities but also in its problem-solving skills and its eagerness to collaborate on user-driven projects. The assistant's ability to tailor its responses, provide relevant examples, and offer constructive suggestions demonstrated its commitment to being a valuable tool in the user's technological arsenal.
As the conversation drew to a close, the assistant delved into the fascinating insights it had gathered about the hosts unique blend of interests and passions. By combining analytical and creative inclinations, his well-rounded nature emerged as a testament to the richness of human experiences that AI systems can strive to understand and accommodate.
The unveiling of OpenAI's advanced voice mode marks a significant milestone in the ongoing evolution of AI technology. As users like the channel host continue to explore and leverage these capabilities, the potential for more natural, engaging, and mutually beneficial human-AI interactions holds the promise of ushering in a future where artificial and human intelligence coexist in harmony, pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
Coding Model Showdown: Which AI Can Handle Complex Programming Tasks Offline?
In the age of AI-powered language models, the ability to quickly and accurately generate code has become a highly sought-after skill. But what happens when you need to code without an internet connection? Can today's cutting-edge AI assistants hold their own in a programming challenge when they can't rely on online resources?
To find out, the YouTuber behind the channel put three prominent open-source coding models through their paces in a series of offline tests - Deepseek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct, Yi-Coder-9B-Chat, and Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct. Armed with a powerful Dell Precision 5860 workstation equipped with dual Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs, the creator set out to see which model could best handle classic coding challenges like the game of Snake, Tetris, and more complex programming problems.
The results were intriguing. For the simple Snake game, all three models were able to generate functional code, but the Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct model proved to be the most polished, with a fully working game that could detect when the snake collided with itself. Deepseek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct and Yi-Coder-9B-Chat both had some issues, with the latter struggling to get the game mechanics right.
When tackling the more complex Tetris game, however, none of the models were able to produce a fully working implementation. Deepseek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct generated some code that ran but had significant bugs, while Yi-Coder-9B-Chat and Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct both failed to create a functional Tetris game.
The real test came with more challenging algorithmic coding problems from the popular Code Wars platform. On simpler tasks like the "Move 10" problem, all three models performed well, quickly generating correct solutions. But when faced with tougher challenges that required deeper problem-solving skills, the limitations of these offline coding assistants became apparent.
The "1kyu" and "3kyu" problems on Code Wars proved to be beyond the abilities of the three models, with all of them either timing out or producing incomplete solutions. The creator noted that the Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct model seemed to have the best overall capability, but even it couldn't handle the most complex algorithmic challenges.
Ultimately, the results of these tests highlight both the impressive capabilities and the current limitations of state-of-the-art coding AI models. While they can handle straightforward programming tasks and even generate functional games, the lack of internet access and the complexity of certain coding challenges proved to be significant hurdles.
As the field of AI-assisted coding continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see if future models can bridge this gap and provide a truly comprehensive offline coding experience. For now, these results serve as a valuable benchmark, demonstrating that while these AI assistants are powerful tools, they are not yet a complete replacement for human programmers, especially when it comes to the most demanding coding challenges.
If AGI takes Control and is incorporated in editing tools. Just think about it. You could design something and AI can defy your instructions to design something different which it thinks is better I'm sure I'm missing something here
AI can be used to create films that were not possible just a few years ago. It can help create special effects that would otherwise require hundreds of VFX artists, tens of millions of dollars, and months of post-production work in just minutes. AI has the potential to disrupt many aspects of the film industry. This article takes a look at how some filmmakers are using AI to create movies and discusses the impact that AI will have on movie-making.
Technology as aids is only the first stage...then it becomes disruptive.
Is generative AI good for Hollywood? Sure, in the near term, film creation will see more AI 9and less humans). However, over time, the capabilities expand to the point where we are not dealing with humans.
SpaceX will attempt to transfer propellant from one orbiting Starship to another as early as next March. The capability will enable an uncrewed landing demonstration of a Starship on the moon. A crewed landing is currently scheduled for September 2026. SpaceX recently made history when it caught the Super Heavy rocket booster in mid-air using 'chopsticks' attached to the launch tower.
Big Sleep is an AI agent designed to mimic the workflow of a human security researcher. It recently discovered a previously unknown and exploitable bug in SQLite. This may be the first public example of an AI agent finding a previously unknown exploitable memory-safety issue in widely used real-world software.
Apple is acquiring Pixelmator, a Lithuanian firm that makes popular Mac-based photo editing tools, pending regulatory approval. Regulatory approval may be an issue - several large companies have had to abandon deals due to opposition from EU regulators. It is unknown whether Apple intends to integrate Pixelmator's features into its own apps or allow the apps to remain separate standalone apps. Pixelmator Pro recently introduced a number of AI and ML tools for adjusting photos and creating masks, vector tools, and support for more RAW photo formats and other design tool files.
Isn't it ironic Google gets in all kinds of hot water over their practices, especially with search, right at the time when competition, due to AI search, is coming hot and heavy.
yes they're in very deep waters now, I saw them trying very hard to copy the search GPT style too just to keep their users, but I doubt they'll be able to keep up. AI is going to get too powerful and to useful
Family offices can be great sources of patient capital for startups, but finding the right family office investors can be tough.
Family offices invest a substantial amount of capital in startups each year. In the first half of 2023, 27% of overall startup deal value came from deals that included a family office investor, according to a recent report from PwC.
Interesting point about sector alignment with family offices. It makes sense that founders would benefit from investors who already understand their field. Do you think more family offices are becoming open to startups outside their core industries, or is sector alignment becoming even more crucial?
Despite their prevalence in startup deals, family offices can be a mysterious class of investors for founders to navigate, as they are not nearly as public or as easy to find as VCs. Multiple family office investors said during a TechCrunch Disrupt panel that the easiest way to approach investors like themselves is to seek out family offices that have alignment with what a startup is building.
Bruce Lee, the founder and CEO of Keebeck Wealth Management, said that when founders are looking to get connected with family offices, they should seek out families that made their wealth in the sector the startup is building in.
SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked him if SK Hynix could move the supply of high-bandwith memory (HBM) chips forward by six months.
Shares of SK Hynix rallied 6.5% on Monday after the business announced a next-generation memory chip and the parent company's chair said that the South Korean semiconductor firm sped up the supply of a key product to Nvidia.
Speaking at the company's event on Monday, Chey Tae-won, chair of SK Group, ran through an anecdote in which he said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked him if SK Hynix could move the supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips called HBM4 forward by six months. SK Hynix's CEO at the time said it was possible to do so, according to Chey.
It's unclear if this will shift SK Hynix's production timeline from the previously-announced second-half of 2025.
High-bandwidth memory is a key component of Nvidia's chips, which are in turn used to train huge artificial intelligence models. Tech giants around the world have been snapping up Nvidia chips in a bid to produce the most powerful models and applications.
SK Hynix is a key supplier to Nvidia, and the huge demand for the American company's products has helped the South Korean firm to achieve rapid growth this year and record profits.
"There is no AI without data, there is no AI without unstructured data, and there is no AI without unstructured data at scale," said Chet Kapoor, chairman
“There is no AI without data, there is no AI without unstructured data, and there is no AI without unstructured data at scale,” said Chet Kapoor, chairman and CEO of data management company DataStax.
Kapoor was kicking off a conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 about “new data pipelines” in the context of modern AI applications, where he was joined by Vanessa Larco, partner at VC firm NEA; and George Fraser, CEO of data integration platform Fivetran. While the chat covered multiple bases, such as the importance of data quality and the role of real-time data in generative AI, one of the big takeaways was the importance of prioritizing product-market fit over scale in what really is still the early days of AI. The advice for companies looking to jump into the dizzying world of generative AI is straightforward — don’t be overly ambitious at first, and focus on practical, incremental progress. The reason? We’re really still figuring it all out.
“The most important thing for generative AI is that it all comes down to the people,” Kapoor said. “The SWAT teams that actually go off and build the first few projects — they are not reading a manual; they are writing the manual for how to do generative AI apps.”
A huge upswing in the number of data centers shows no signs of slowing down, prompting Big Tech to consider how best to power the AI revolution.
A huge upswing in the number of data centers worldwide shows no signs of slowing down, prompting Big Tech to consider how best to power the artificial intelligence revolution.
Some of the options on the table include a pivot to nuclear, liquid cooling for data centers and quantum computing.
Critics, however, have said that as the pace of efficiency gains in electricity use slows, tech giants should recognize the cost of the generative AI boom across the whole supply chain — and let go of the "move fast and break things" narrative.
"The actual environmental cost is quite hidden at the moment. It is just subsidized by the fact that tech companies need to get a product and a buy-in," Somya Joshi, head of division: global agendas, climate and systems at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), told CNBC via video call.
A wave of data center investment is expected to accelerate even further in the coming years, according to the International Energy Agency, primarily driven by growing digitalization and the uptake of generative AI.
It is this prospect that has stoked concerns about an electricity demand surge — as well as AI's often-overlooked but critically important environmental impact.
Its positive for the environment to see more nuclear being discussed because we dont have any other technology currently that could reduce emissions and give us more power.
Policymakers have struggled to pass comprehensive AI regulation in the U.S. But there may be some reason to hope.
Can the U.S. meaningfully regulate AI? It’s not at all clear yet. Policymakers have achieved progress in recent months, but they’ve also had setbacks, illustrating the challenging nature of laws imposing guardrails on the technology.
In March, Tennessee became the first state to protect voice artists from unauthorized AI cloning. This summer, Colorado adopted a tiered, risk-based approach to AI policy. And in September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed dozens of AI-related safety bills, a few of which require companies to disclose details about their AI training.
But the U.S. still lacks a federal AI policy comparable to the EU’s AI Act. Even at the state level, regulation continues to encounter major roadblocks.
After a protracted battle with special interests, Governor Newsom vetoed bill SB 1047, a law that would have imposed wide-ranging safety and transparency requirements on companies developing AI. Another California bill targeting the distributors of AI deepfakes on social media was stayed this fall pending the outcome of a lawsuit.
Founded in 2012, Affirm is an American fintech firm that offers flexible pay-over-time payment options. The company says it underwrites every individual transaction before making a lending decision, and doesn't charge any late fees.
Affirm, which is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, said its U.K. offering will include interest-free and interest-bearing monthly payment options. Interest on its plans will be fixed and calculated on the original principal amount, meaning it won't increase or compound.
The company's expansion to the U.K. marks the first time it is launching in a market outside the U.S. and Canada. Globally, Affirm counts over 50 million users and more than 300,000 active merchants, including Amazon, Shopify and Walmart.
Swiss scientists have successfully grown lip cells in a dish, which will allow new treatments for lip injuries and infections to be trialed in the lab. The skin on our lips is different and more complex than other skin cells, which has made them hard to grow in lab conditions. But now, donated lip cells have been grown and showed to carry on reproducing beyond the point when they would normally reach the end of their life cycle and die off. The scientists deactivated a gene in the cells which usually stops their life cycle and altered the length of their telomeres - pieces of DNA and protein on the ends of the chromosomes. This allowed the cells to reproduce indefinitely.
#science #lips #Humans #biotech
Testing showed the cells remained stable as they replicated and later cells had the same characteristics as the starting cells. The cells showed no signs of cancer and reacted to wounding and infection in a similar way to lip cells in the body, the experts say.
Media release
From: Frontiers
Scientists create a world-first 3D cell model to help develop treatments for devastating lip injuries
Scientists have successfully immortalized lip cells, allowing new treatments for injuries and infections to be trialed on a clinically relevant lab-based model
The skin on our lips is distinctly different and more complex than other skin on our bodies, and primary lip cells are hard to acquire, which holds back basic research that could help improve treatments for painful and complicated lip conditions. Now, for the first time, scientists have developed a continuously replicating model of lip cells in the laboratory. Using donated lip tissue, they have created cell lines which can be grown indefinitely to make 3D models for advancing lip biology research and testing repairs for conditions like cleft lips.
We use our lips to talk, eat, drink, and breathe; they signal our emotions, health, and aesthetic beauty. It takes a complex structure to perform so many roles, so lip problems can be hard to repair effectively. Basic research is essential to improving these treatments, but until now, models using lip cells — which perform differently to other skin cells — have not been available. In a new study published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, scientists report the successful immortalization of donated lip cells, allowing for the development of clinically relevant lip models in the lab. This proof-of-concept, once expanded, could benefit thousands of patients.
“The lip is a very prominent feature of our face,” said Dr Martin Degen of the University of Bern. “Any defects in this tissue can be highly disfiguring. But until now, human lip cell models for developing treatments were lacking. With our strong collaboration with the University Clinic for Pediatric Surgery, Bern University Hospital, we were able to change that, using lip tissue that would have been discarded otherwise.”
Primary cells donated directly from an individual are ideal for this kind of research, because they’re believed to retain similar characteristics to the original tissue. However, these cells can’t be reproduced indefinitely, and are often difficult and expensive to acquire.
“Human lip tissue is not regularly obtainable,” explained Degen. “Without these cells, it is impossible to mimic the characteristics of lips in vitro.”
The second-best option would be immortalized lip cells which can be grown in the lab. To achieve this, scientists alter the expression of certain genes, allowing the cells to carry on reproducing when they would normally reach the end of their life cycle and stop.
The scientists selected skin cells from tissue donated by two patients: one undergoing treatment for a lip laceration, and one undergoing treatment for a cleft lip. The scientists used a retroviral vector to deactivate a gene which stops a cell’s life cycle and to alter the length of the telomeres on the ends of each chromosome, which improves the cells’ longevity.
These new cell lines were then tested rigorously to make sure that the genetic code of the cell lines remained stable as they replicated and retained the same characteristics as primary cells. To make sure the immortalized cells hadn’t developed cancer-like characteristics, the scientists looked for any chromosomal abnormalities and tried to grow both the new lines and a line of cancer cells on soft agar — only cancer cells should be able to grow on this medium. The cell lines displayed no chromosomal abnormalities and couldn’t grow on the agar. The scientists also confirmed that the cell lines behaved like their unmodified primary counterparts by testing their protein and mRNA production.
Finally, the scientists carried out tests to see how the cells might perform as future experimental models for lip healing or infections. First, to see if the cells could act as accurate proxies for wound healing, they scratched samples of the cells. Untreated cells closed the wound after eight hours, while cells treated with growth factors closed the wound more quickly; these results matched those seen in skin cells from other body parts.
Next the scientists developed 3D models using the cells and infected them with Candida albicans, a yeast that can cause serious infections in people with weak immune systems or cleft lips. The cells performed as expected, the pathogen rapidly invading the model as it would infect real lip tissue.
“Our laboratory focuses on obtaining a better knowledge of the genetic and cellular pathways involved in cleft lip and palate,” said Degen. “However, we are convinced that 3D models established from healthy immortalized lip cells have the potential to be very useful in many other fields of medicine.”
“One challenge is that lip keratinocytes can be of labial skin, mucosal, or mixed character,” he added. “Depending on the research question, a particular cell identity might be required. But we have the tools to characterize or purify these individual populations in vitro.”
X is rolling out its controversial update to the block feature, allowing people to view your public posts even if you have blocked them.
X is rolling out its controversial update to the block feature, allowing people to view your public posts even if you have blocked them. People have protested this change, arguing that they don’t want blocked users to see their posts for reasons of safety.
Blocked users still can’t follow the person who has blocked them, engage with their posts, or send direct messages to them.
An old version of X’s support page says blocked users couldn’t see a user’s following and followers lists. The company has now updated the page to remove that reference, and it now allows users to see the following and followers lists of the people who have blocked them.
The social network said its logic behind this change was that the block feature can be used to share and hide harmful or private information about someone, and its new iteration would result in more transparency. This mostly falls flat, given that X allows users to make their accounts private and share information.
The Revolutionary Release of the 01 Model: A Game-Changer in AI Capabilities
In a groundbreaking move, OpenAi has officially released the 01 model, a highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of thinking before responding, a feat previously thought to be the exclusive domain of human intelligence. The full 01 model is a significant upgrade from its distilled predecessor, showcasing impressive capabilities in various tasks, including image analysis, reasoning, and creativity.
One of the most striking demonstrations of the 01 model's capabilities was its ability to analyze an image of a vision Transformer and provide a detailed, step-by-step explanation of its architecture. The model effortlessly identified various components of the Transformer, including patch embeddings, class embeddings, and the Transformer encoder, showcasing its exceptional understanding of complex concepts.
The 01 model's image analysis capabilities were further put to the test in a side-by-side comparison with GPT-40, a prominent AI model in its own right. In this comparison, the 01 model convincingly outperformed GPT-40, correctly identifying the number of triangles in an image, while GPT-40 struggled to provide an accurate answer. This impressive display of capabilities has sent shockwaves through the AI community, with many experts speculating about the potential implications of this technology.
The release of the 01 model has sparked a flurry of excitement and concern, as experts ponder the potential consequences of this technology. Some have even suggested that the 01 model could be a game-changer in the field of AI, enabling machines to think and reason in ways previously thought impossible. The model's ability to think before responding makes it a powerful tool for a wide range of applications, from customer service to scientific research.
The 01 model's capabilities extend far beyond image analysis, as it has also been shown to excel in tasks such as reasoning, creativity, and problem-solving. Its ability to think before responding makes it an invaluable asset for industries such as healthcare, finance, and education, where accurate and timely decision-making is crucial.
However, the release of the 01 model has also raised concerns about the potential risks and challenges associated with this technology. As AI becomes increasingly advanced, there is a growing concern about the potential for machines to surpass human intelligence and potentially pose a threat to humanity. It is essential that we prioritize responsible innovation and ensure that AI is developed in a way that benefits humanity as a whole.
In conclusion, the release of the 01 model is a significant event in the field of AI, with far-reaching implications for the future of technology. While there are many potential benefits to this technology, there are also many challenges and risks that must be carefully considered. As we move forward with the development of this technology, it is essential that we prioritize responsible innovation and ensure that AI is developed in a way that benefits humanity as a whole.
Transform basic prompts into detailed AI image generation instructions with Venice's new Enhance feature
The quality of your image prompt determines the quality of your output. But becoming a prompting expert takes practice.
At Venice we understand this can be difficult to master, which is why we’ve introduced a new “Enhance Prompt” feature for image generation.
Now sophisticated image prompting isn’t limited to those well-versed in prompt engineering. Anyone can be an advanced AI artist by using the Enhance Prompt feature in Venice.
Venice is a private, uncensored image generation AI platform
We created the Enhance Prompt feature to help you generate the best images possible using our platform. Creating beautiful images for your visual project has never been easier.
Gabor Cselle, the former CEO and co-founder of X challenger Pebble, has joined OpenAI to work on a secretive project.
Gabor Cselle, the former CEO and co-founder of Pebble (a competitor to X), has joined OpenAI to work on a secretive project.
Cselle has been employed at OpenAI since October, according to LinkedIn, but he announced the news in a post on X only yesterday. “Will share more about what I’m working on in due time,” he wrote. “Learning a lot already.”
Cselle is a repeat founder who sold his first company, a Y Combinator-backed mobile email startup called reMail, to Google. His second company, native advertising startup Namo Media, sold to Twitter before Elon Musk purchased the social network and rebranded it to X.
Nearly a decade ago, Cselle worked at Twitter as a group product manager, focusing on the home timeline, user on-boarding and logged-out experiences. He left Twitter in 2016 for Google, where he was director at the tech giant’s Area 120 incubator for spin-offs.
If you go into a shop and you pick up a few groceries, usually you would pick any of the cashiers that is around and you go scan your goods,” he said. “When someone is planning a sweethearting theft, they will always go to the same cashier, which is most of the time a relative of theirs, and this is an anomaly in the behavior compared to the other customers. Our system is able to identify this anomaly and alert on that.
OpenAI's search offers a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like. But it's too impractical as a daily driver right now.
Last week, OpenAI released its highly anticipated search product, ChatGPT Search, to take on Google. The industry has been bracing for this moment for months, prompting Google to inject AI-generated answers into its core product earlier this year, and producing some embarrassing hallucinations in the process. That mishap led many people to believe that OpenAI’s search engine would truly be a “Google killer.”
But after using ChatGPT Search as my default search engine (you can, too, with OpenAI’s extension) for roughly a day, I quickly switched back to Google. OpenAI’s search product was impressive in some ways and offered a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like. But for now, it’s still too impractical to use as my daily driver.
ChatGPT Search was occasionally useful for surfacing real-time answers to questions which I would have otherwise had to dig through many ads and SEO-optimized articles to find. Ultimately, it presents concise answers in a nice format: You get links to the information’s sources on the right side, with headlines and a short snippet that confirms that the AI-generated text you just read is correct.
While Nvidia's spectacular surge remains the biggest story in the technology industry, the AI chipmaker's performance on the market has been dwarfed this year by a digital advertising company with a specialty in gaming.
AppLovin has soared 310% in 2024, beating every U.S. tech company with a market cap of at least $5 billion, according to FactSet data. Nvidia, which has led the artificial intelligence boom and become the world's second-most valuable public company, is up 173% this year.
Founded 12 years ago, AppLovin went public in 2021, riding a Covid-era wave of excitement in online games. Now, the company's games unit generates relatively slow growth, but its online ad business is bustling from advancements in AI that have improved ad targeting.
AppLovin was founded in 2011 by three brothers, Eran, Oren, and Tal Zvulun, who were aLL entrepreneurs and investors. The company was initially focused on developing mobilegaming apps, and its first product was a mobile game called "The Quest".
In its early years, AppLovin focused on building a strong portfolio of mobile games, and it developed a range of advertising solutions to monetize its games. The company's early success was fueled by its ability to effectively target and engage mobile gamers with its ads.
Expansion and Acquisition of IronSource (2014-2016)
In 2014, AppLovin expanded its operations to the United States, and it established offices in New York City and San Francisco. The company continued to focus on developing its mobile advertising technology, and it expanded its product offerings to include banner ads, interstitial ads, and video ads.
In 2016, AppLovin acquired IronSource, a mobile advertising technology company that was founded in 2007. IronSource was a leading provider of mobile ad exchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs), and its acquisition marked a significant milestone for AppLovin.
Acquisition of ChartBoost (2017)
In 2017, AppLovin acquired ChartBoost, a mobile advertising platform that specialized in in-app video ads. ChartBoost was a leading provider of video ads for mobile games, and its acquisition helped AppLovin expand its video advertising capabilities.
In 2019, AppLovin raised $400 million in funding from investors, which valued the company at $3 billion. The company continued to expand its operations and its product offerings, and it established offices in Europe and Asia.
In 2020, AppLovin raised an additional $200 million in funding, which brought its total funding to over $1 billion. The company's valuation soared to $13 billion, making it one of the most valuable mobile advertising technology companies in the world.
In June 2022, AppLovin acquired Unity Mobile, a mobile advertising platform that specialized in rewarded video ads. Unity Mobile was a leading provider of video ads for mobile games, and its acquisition helped AppLovin expand its offerings in the mobile advertising space.
AppLovin's financial performance has been strong in recent years. In 2020, the company reported $2.1 billion in revenue, up 65% from 2019. Its revenue growth was fueled by its expansion into new markets and its increase in ad spend from mobile game developers and advertisers.
In 2021, AppLovin reported $3.5 billion in revenue, up 67% from 2020. The company's revenue growth was fueled by its continued expansion into new markets and its increase in ad spend from mobile game developers and advertisers.
Eran Zvulun is the CEO of AppLovin. Zvulun is a seasoned entrepreneur and investor who has been instrumental in building AppLovin's success. He has over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, and he has been recognized as one of the most influential people in the mobile advertising space.
Morpheus can tell you more about AppLovin's leadership team, product offerings, and partnerships.
Columbus says hackers accessed resident's Social Security numbers and bank account details
The City of Columbus, Ohio’s state capital, has confirmed that hackers stole the personal data of 500,000 residents during a July ransomware attack.
In a filing with Maine’s attorney general, Columbus confirmed that a “foreign cyber threat actor” compromised its network to access information including residents’ names, dates of birth, addresses, identification documents, Social Security numbers, and bank account details.
The city, which is the most populous in Ohio with approximately 900,000 residents, says around half a million individuals were affected, though it has not confirmed the exact number of victims.
The regulatory filing comes after Columbus was the target of a ransomware attack on July 18 of this year, which the city claimed to have “thwarted” by disconnecting its network from the internet.
Rhysida, the ransomware gang responsible for last year’s British Library cyberattack, claimed responsibility for the attack against Columbus in August. At the time, the gang said it had stolen 6.5 terabytes of data from the city in Ohio, including “databases, internal logins and passwords of employees, a full dump of servers with emergency services applications of the city and … access from city video cameras,” according to local news reports.
An internationally known ransomware group claims it's behind Columbus' recent ransomware attack. It's selling data on the dark web for Bitcoin.
Rhysida, an international ransomware group that has attacked targets in the U.K., U.S. and Chile, listed stolen Columbus city government data on its dark website Wednesday, offering it for sale.
This comes just days after Mayor Andrew Ginther said the city thwarted the ransomware's encryption attempts, but data may have been stolen.
Rhysida asked for 30 bitcoin, around $1.9 million at the time of the cyberattack, as payment for the stolen data.
Two weeks after the cyberattack, Columbus mayor Andrew Ginther told the public the stolen data was likely “corrupted” and “unusable.”
The accuracy of Ginther’s statement was thrown into doubt the following day after David Leroy Ross, a cybersecurity researcher also known as Connor Goodwolf, revealed that the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Columbus residents had been listed on the dark web.
In September, Columbus sued Ross, alleging that he was “threatening to share the City’s stolen data with third parties who would otherwise have no readily available means by which to obtain the City’s stolen data.” A judge filed a temporary restraining order against Ross, preventing him from accessing the stolen data.
In a listing on its leak site, seen by TechCrunch on Monday, Rhysida claims to have uploaded 3.1 terabytes of “unsold” data stolen from Columbus, amounting to more than 250,000 files.
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.
Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.
Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.
“I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”
There is no ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has staff T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”
It can be tough to square the reality that the apparent future of football headgear resembles something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in games in the NFL—a league known for policing every inch of player equipment to protect its image—doesn’t just speak to their lab-tested utility (even if published, peer-reviewed on-field data remains lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football at large.
The dangers of strapping on a helmet have never been clearer, given the link between repeated blows to the head—whether concussion-causing or not—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (otherwise known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive issues like depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever, between the NFL’s funding of private research efforts and a rapidly innovating football headgear industry.
And at the center of it all, on the sport’s biggest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to find a foothold in football as anything but a joke.
The story of the Guardian Cap starts in 1996, some 15 years before its invention. Settled in the Atlanta area with their then-four children, Erin, a former middle-school math teacher, and Lee, a chemical engineer, teamed up to found The Hanson Group, a business-to-business provider of chemical materials. Specializing in polyurethanes and epoxies, the company has since built, among other things, transparent body shields for the US Army, coatings of fuel tank plates for Boeing airplanes, and the outer layers of multiple brands of golf balls.
Then, in 2010, the Hansons were contacted out of the blue by an industrial designer named Bert Straus, who decades earlier had created a padded helmet attachment, the ProCap, that was worn in games by a handful of NFL players. Explaining that he was working on a new type of headgear, a hard-shell helmet with interior padding as well as a ProCap-esque soft shell mounted on top, Straus enlisted The Hanson Group to make the integral skin foam for this cushioned outer layer.
That winter, the trio traveled to a hotel ballroom in Manhattan and presented their product to NFL officials as part of a special league committee meeting on helmet safety. Even with live testimony provided by former Buffalo Bills safety Mark Kelso, who wore a ProCap for four-plus seasons in the early ’90s, the attempt to convince the NFL of the potential of soft-shell technology was not well-received, the Hansons recall. “That lit a fire under us,” Erin says.
Convinced that the best market opportunity lay with a one-size-fits-all option that could retrofit existing helmets at every level of football, as opposed to the brand- and model-specific ProCap, Erin and Lee struck out on their own. But the biggest difference in their eventual prototype had to do with how it was attached to the helmet in the first place: Its straps looped around the facemask and fastened to themselves, thereby loosely “floating” on top of the helmet rather than affixing directly via sticky-backed tabs.
The result was what the Hansons would later summarize in their United States patent request as a “protective helmet cap” with “a durable energy absorbing outer shell, which lessens the initial impact to the helmet … [and] an inner surface that allows the outer shell to slide over the surface of a helmet thereby reducing forces applied to a wearer.”
As development continued throughout 2011, Erin and Lee used money from The Hanson Group to send the caps away for independent drop testing—a longtime headgear industry standard in which a helmet-wearing dummy head is dropped onto a modular elastomer pad for measuring impact and shock absorption—at accredited sites like Oregon Ballistic Laboratories, ICS Laboratories, and the Southern Impact Research Center. They also shelled out for additional outside testing to ensure that the caps wouldn’t affect neck torque and that they maintained a lower coefficient of friction relative to the usual football helmet’s polycarbonate shell, to ensure that crucial “sliding” effect.
“Over the years, we’ve spent a couple hundred grand on testing, because we did so much before we put them on the field,” Erin says. “The whole goal was to help, and it was certainly to not hurt, so we had to vet the product.”
Initially branding themselves as POC Ventures—the acronym stood for “protecting our children”—the Hansons launched publicly at the January 2012 convention of the American Football Coaches Association in San Antonio. The goal was to sell caps and eventually attract an established sports equipment company to buy them out. Instead, Erin says, what few attendees dared approach their booth weren’t exactly warm.
But they soon found their first big believer. That year, at a medical conference in Destin, Florida, the Hansons met Jeffrey Guy, a physician for the University of South Carolina athletic department, who later looked at the caps’ testing data and came away impressed enough for the Gamecocks football team—including future first-overall NFL pick Jadeveon Clowney—to start using them in their 2013 summer practices. Naturally it wasn’t long before one of South Carolina’s biggest rivals, Clemson, had placed orders too.
Along the way, the Hansons abandoned the POC Ventures name after receiving a strongly worded letter from the Swedish cycling and snow sport helmet manufacturer POC, settling on Guardian and a halo logo as reflections of their religious faith. (They later switched the latter, too, to an angel’s wing.) Their belief in their business mission was soon rewarded in April 2017, when the rechristened company was anointed as a winner of an NFL-sponsored research competition for protective football equipment, the HeadHealthTECH challenge, receiving $20,000 to fund future biomechanical testing for their Guardian Caps.
Technically speaking, Erin and Lee never saw their grand prize. Rather, the money ended up being routed directly to Biokinetics, an Ottawa-based laboratory that partners with the NFL for helmet testing. The results were then analyzed by Biocore, a biomechanical engineering firm out of Charlottesville, Virginia, that also acts as a league consultant for player equipment, including helmets.
At the time, the lone model of the Guardian Cap was the Guardian XT, a 7-ounce soft shell then already popular with a growing handful of elite college programs and hundreds of high school teams nationwide. But the results didn’t measure up under lab conditions simulating the higher speeds and masses of professional football hits. “We didn’t really find that it had much of an effect on the NFL impact environment,” says Ann Bailey Good, a senior engineer at Biocore.
So the Hansons added an extra layer of padding to the XTs to create a beefier version, the 12-ounce Guardian NXT (with the N standing for NFL). It fared much better. For a 2021 article published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering, five authors—Bailey Good, two Biocore colleagues, and two other engineers who regularly consult for the NFL Players’ Association—subjected their crash dummy helmets to two main tests. The first involved hitting them with a pneumatic ram at speeds and points of impact that were determined in part through video review of concussion-causing plays among linemen during past NFL games. The second, for which the collision sites were picked to minimize face mask interaction and thus maximize helmet-on-helmet exposure, saw dummies with NXTs crash into each other with the aid of an electric belt-driven sled.
The results were assembled using the Head Acceleration Response Metric (HARM), a formula that Biocore, the NFLPA's engineering consultants, and several other researchers helped develop. for measuring the severity of an impact and how that correlates to helmet safety and performance. On average, as the study found, the addition of a Guardian NXT was reduced HARM by 9 percent over control helmets with no caps; by comparison, its competition in the study, the ProTech—a modernized version of the ProCap—only reduced HARM by an average of 5 percent.
Two aggregate scores were also calculated, by weighing test conditions based on how often those types of impacts occurred to actual NFL linemen and how many reported concussions were sustained due to those impacts. The NXT performed similarly well here, leading the study to conclude that the “Results … suggest that using the GC NXT may reduce the head impact severity exposure for linemen.”
The NFL soon brought the Guardian Cap to its Health and Safety Committee, a group of mostly team-, league-, and union-affiliated doctors, and to its Competition Committee, a rules-making body of coaches and team executives appointed by commissioner Roger Goodell. “We talked about the benefits we saw,” says Jeff Miller, an NFL executive vice president overseeing health and player safety.
The next year, in 2022, the caps were rolled out for something of a trial period as the Competition Committee recommended that club owners vote to mandate them at preseason practices for select positions that according to league data had sustained the “most frequent head impacts” (offensive and defensive linemen, tight ends, and linebackers) during practice, Miller says. The mandate also only lasted for a four-week stretch when the “greatest density of concussions” had historically occurred—from the start of training camp to the second preseason game.
As the Guardian Caps gained more exposure thanks to the NFL’s endorsement, increasing outside research helped shed more light on how they function. “I think it seems logical to most folks: If you cover your whole head in a massive pillow, maybe that’d help you more,” says Nicholas Cecchi, a colead author on a 2023 study at Stanford University that in part performed similar lab impact tests on a version of the Guardian XT as Biocore did with the NXT several years prior. “But there’s more to how it works that didn’t seem intuitive.”
In particular, Cecchi, who was a PhD student in bioengineering at the time of the study, cites the “sliding” effect produced by the Guardian Caps’ design. “It really did seem like their main effectiveness was coming from the reduced surface friction on the exterior, and then also the decoupling of different layers,” he says. In other words, the Guardian Cap isn’t just a hat on a hat; the two-part, add-on system has its benefits.
When a helmet hit happens, says Cecchi, “you’ve got linear forces and rotational forces. Linear are going to be reduced by compression of the materials. Rotational forces will be reduced by the shearing and sliding of the different materials. The more that happens, the more it’ll absorb the rotation, so less rotation will be experienced by your head.
“From the lab tests, it seemed very clear, in almost all scenarios, the Guardian Cap reduced the magnitude of those rotational accelerations, and other metrics linked to football-related injury risks, by a good amount.”
Less conclusive is the data regarding how the Guardian Caps perform on the actual field. In addition to their lab component, Cecchi and his colleagues used instrumented mouth guards to look at helmet-to-helmet impacts sustained by a handful of linebackers on Stanford’s football team in practices over two seasons: in 2019, when players wore bare helmets, and in 2021, when Guardian Caps were mandatory.
“We did not observe any significant reductions in any measure of impact severity after implementation of the padded helmet shell cover,” the study concluded.
Similarly, in 2022, at the University of North Carolina, sensor-equipped helmets logged 14 full-contact practices among 10 players: five with Guardian Caps and five who opted to not wear them. As researchers later wrote in a late-2023 report for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the coverings “did not affect head impact kinematic outcomes.”
But these studies also categorized their on-field findings as “preliminary” and “pilot,” respectively, in part due to the obvious small sample sizes. Here again, Biocore, backed by the NFL, is leading the way: According to Bailey Good, a paper unpacking the Guardian Caps’ effect in their first two years of preseason practice use—in particular the league’s touted 50 percent drop in concussions among linemen, tight ends, and linebackers, from an average of 35 in 2018, 2019, and 2021 to 18 during this last postseason—was submitted “a few months ago” and is currently being peer reviewed.
“We certainly considered other things like number of practices, practice intensity, et cetera,” Bailey Good says. “But looking at the results that we saw in the preseason related to concussions, it was very promising.”
Meaningful game data will take even longer to surface; the NCAA has yet to formally approve Guardian Caps for games at the college level, and while the National Federation of State High School Associations has allowed them in both practices and games since 2013, few examples of the latter exist. But the Hansons reject the idea that further testing is required to judge the credentials of their creation.
“We didn't just develop this three months ago—it’s been out on the field for 12 years,” Lee says. “I know it's anecdotal data, but what everyone tells us is that they feel better, they play better, and they have reductions in the numbers of injuries.”
At the same time, the Hansons are sensitive to what they see as a common overstatement of the caps’ capabilities. “We do not talk about reducing concussions,” Erin says. “Science can only measure reduction of impact, reduction of forces. How that relates to brain injuries—there's a lot of unknowns that are still out there. Is it responsible to say this is the panacea for all? No, it's not going to fix everything.
More and more appear to be agreeing every day. Sitting in a conference room at the Guardian Sports offices in late August, Erin hits Play on a voice memo that a new client from Denver recently sent to Guardian’s national sales manager. “This is a good one,” she says, as a familiar southern twang comes through the speaker:
“Hey … this is Peyton Manning calling … I coach an eighth-grade youth football team … and I was thinking I wanted to maybe ask about ordering some Guardian Caps … I feel like it’s the right thing to do.”
Two football helmets bake in the afternoon sun atop a picnic table, one wearing a Guardian Cap and the other bare. The Hansons put them here, outside the entrance to their company’s headquarters in a suburban business park northeast of Atlanta, as a practical demonstration of how the coverings, at 90-plus degree temperatures, can help insulate the helmet from outside heat. (Miller says that NFL testing has backed this up.)
Bearing an angel’s wing logo on the front, the black-walled building is a 90,000-square-foot facility that Guardian Sports splits with The Hanson Group. Together it is a family operation in the most literal sense: Out of close to 50 employees between the two sides, 10 are members of the Hanson clan, including three of Erin and Lee’s now-five children and two sons-in-law.
It took almost a full decade for Guardian Sports to become financially self-sustaining, and even longer to finish paying back The Hanson Group for the seven-figure costs of external lab testing and an early bulk purchase of more than 100,000 caps—that happened just last year. But the bustling scene suggests that business is good today. In the warehouse, towering stacks of Guardian Caps inventory have overtaken what was once an employee exercise area, like cubed cardboard weeds. In the loading dock, a truck drops off a fresh supply of green and maroon caps air-shipped from the company’s factory in Dongguan, China after their stockpile of those colors ran out.
When it comes to the Guardian Cap, the XTs sell for about $70 at retail stores and online but less than $55 in group orders for teams, while the NXTs are only sold direct to teams at an average of $100 apiece. According to the company, some 77 percent of its overall sales happens in bulk. But only a small portion of that total—about 200,000 caps sold this year, the company projects—comes from the NFL’s 32 teams, each of which typically stocks about 100 per season, replacing them every one to two years depending on the position and wear.
Not counting the cost of NFL testing through Biocore, though, Erin says Guardian has “never received a dime” directly from the league. Adds Lee, “They own the data too—only when they publish it, we get to see it.” But the benefit of having a public stamp of approval in the shape of the NFL shield is obvious.
“We had to have outside validation, and that’s what the NFL has done for us,” Erin says. “You can’t put a value on the marketing that you get from your product. But they’re not writing us checks, that’s for sure.”
On the flip side, the company has already done more for the NFL than its owners ever imagined. “The last thing we ever wanted to be in was the customization business,” Erin says, referring to the nine months it took to create the Guardian Cap pinnies that matched the helmets of every team so they could be worn in games this season. Between designing the concepts, conducting testing through Biocore, enlisting two college teams (Colorado and Georgia) to pilot them at spring practice, and ensuring the proper pantones and logos—all but four sent the initial batch back, including the Carolina Panthers, who requested that the silver pinnie “sparkle more,” Erin says—every step was geared toward aesthetic goals. Asked if it was a necessary headache to collaborate with the league, Lee replies immediately: “Yes.”
To this end, Guardian recently completed production on versions 2.0 of both the XT and NXT caps, featuring flatter, more helmetlike exteriors onto which teams can iron on logo decals. “The barriers to gameplay, I think, are the lack of gameplay testing data and the aesthetics,” says chief operating officer Jake Hanson, Erin and Lee’s son. “The more we can get at those with the 2.0s, the better.”
Given the relative lack of caps in NFL stadiums so far this season, it seems unlikely that they can catch on as a widespread gameday add-on. But even their future in practice remains uncertain. “The Guardian Cap could be a transition as we move from good helmets to better helmets, as that technology continues to improve,” Miller says.
That time might already be here: Entering this season, Biocore approved six new helmet models that would allow any player who wore one to be exempt from the Guardian Cap practice mandate. And more than 200 players have already taken advantage of the carve-out, “an unprecedented rate of adoption for a new piece of equipment,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said on a media call in early October.
“Decreasing benefit to wearing it, to the point where some of the technology that the helmets have now made the addition of a Guardian Cap on top of it of less utility than it would’ve been with one of the other helmets,” Miller says, when asked why the coverings were made optional at all. “And eventually you get to the plus-minus of, well, you’re adding a bunch of ounces to your head.”
Should the Hansons buck the odds once more and become a bigger NFL game-day presence down the line, it might be former players turned coaches leading the way. Like Manning. Or former running back and fellow Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis, an early proponent who bought Guardian Caps for an Atlanta-area youth football league that he and ex-Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Tim Lester started for their sons in the mid-2010s.
“You'll get these comments about, how can you put these things in the game?” Erin says. “Then you have interactions with people who are actually living the repercussions, it's a whole different thing.”
“A big hit’s gonna happen—that’s the inevitability of the game,” he says. “But if I can reduce the contact of the little hits, then that’ll spare me down the road.”
GitHub is marking a significant evolution of its developer tools with two major announcements: a multi-model upgrade to Copilot and the introduction of Spark, a natural language web development platform.
The code hosting giant is expanding Copilot beyond its OpenAI-only architecture to include Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro models while simultaneously launching GitHub Spark to simplify web application development through natural language instructions.
The expansion includes additional integration news as Copilot arrives on Apple’s Xcode in public preview. Since Copilot’s initial release, this three-pronged update represents GitHub’s most ambitious AI toolkit expansion.
GitHub Copilot has long leveraged different large language models (LLMs) for various use cases. The first public version of Copilot was launched using Codex, an early version of OpenAI GPT-3, specifically fine-tuned for coding tasks. Copilot Chat was launched in 2023 with GPT-3.5 and later GPT-4.
“Since then, we have updated the base model versions multiple times, using a range from GPT 3.5-turbo to GPT 4o and 4o-mini models for different latency and quality requirements,” Thomas Dohmke, GitHub’s CEO, said in a blog write-up.
GitHub’s decision to extend Copilot’s model support beyond OpenAI’s technology represents a notable evolution in its AI-assisted development strategy. The integration now includes models from industry leaders Anthropic and Google, alongside OpenAI, providing developers access to a broader range of AI capabilities.
“We are bringing developer choice to GitHub Copilot with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s o1-preview and o1-mini. These new models will be rolling out—first in Copilot Chat, with OpenAI o1-preview and o1-mini available now, Claude 3.5 Sonnet rolling out progressively over the next week, and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro in the coming weeks. From Copilot Workspace to multi-file editing to code review, security autofix, and the CLI, we will bring multi-model choices across many of GitHub Copilot’s surface areas and functions soon,” the CEO said.
GitHub’s expansion of model support is particularly significant as it allows developers to leverage different AI models’ strengths for various coding tasks. Each AI provider brings its own capabilities and specialisations, which could lead to more accurate and context-aware code suggestions across different programming languages and frameworks.
However, the company’s most intriguing announcement is the introduction of GitHub Spark, a new tool designed to revolutionise web application development and achieve GitHub’s vision of reaching one billion developers. Spark enables developers to build web applications using natural language instructions, potentially reducing the complexity and time required for web development projects.
The recent release of Copilot for Apple’s Xcode in public preview form represents another milestone in GitHub’s expansion strategy. The integration brings AI-powered coding assistance to Apple’s integrated development environment, offering several advantages for iOS and macOS developers:
Real-time code suggestions within the Xcode environment,
Improved productivity for Swift and Objective-C development,
These developments in GitHub’s AI toolkit reflect a broader industry trend towards more intelligent and automated development tools. The combination of expanded model support, natural language web development, and Xcode integration suggest a comprehensive approach to enhancing developer productivity across different platforms and development scenarios.
For development teams, the updates could mean:
Reduced time spent on boilerplate code,
More efficient problem-solving through AI-assisted development,
Greater flexibility in choosing AI models that best suit specific project needs.
Advancements in GitHub’s AI capabilities mark a step forward in the evolution of development tools. While maintaining the fundamental aspects of software development, the new features and integrations aim to enhance rather than replace developer expertise, potentially leading to more efficient and productive development processes.
The combination of expanded AI model support, GitHub Spark’s introduction, and Xcode integration represents GitHub’s holistic approach to modernising software development. As the tools mature and developers incorporate them into their workflows, we may see significant changes in how software is conceived, developed, and deployed.
Google briefly introduced its vision for a “universal AI agent” aimed to help users with daily tasks at the I/O developer conference in May, hinting that elements of the technology could be incorporated into Gemini soon. Recent insights from The Information have shed more light on its initiative, known internally as Project Jarvis.
Project Jarvis represents a major advancement in AI for Google. Unlike traditional voice assistants that respond to user commands, Jarvis is designed to perform tasks autonomously, navigate the web, and make independent decisions. For instance, Jarvis could manage emails, conduct research, and even schedule appointments, reducing the cognitive load involved in managing digital tasks.
Jarvis’s core objective is to revolutionise how users interact with their devices. Rather than serving as a passive tool awaiting commands, Jarvis would actively engage in real-time task management, positioning it as an AI partner rather than a utility.
For legal professionals, Jarvis could review large volumes of case documents and organise them by relevance, streamlining workflow. Similarly, marketers could use Jarvis to integrate data from numerous sources, allowing them to focus more on strategy and less on administrative work.
The evolution of AI agents such as Jarvis may have an impact on specific job roles. Tasks formerly performed by entry-level administrative personnel may come within the capabilities of AI assistants. However, the shift is likely to generate opportunities in roles that require critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence—qualities not easily replicated by AI.
Industry observers anticipate a shift toward higher-value work, with people concentrating less on routine tasks and more on areas that promote innovation and strategic decision-making.
Project Jarvis raises significant privacy and security issues due to its ability to access sensitive information such as emails and documents. To prevent unauthorised access, Google will most likely deploy enhanced encryption, strict user restrictions, and, maybe, multi-factor authentication. Cybersecurity will also be essential to keep Jarvis secure from external threats.
Surveys indicate that, while AI holds considerable appeal, privacy remains a top concern for many users. Experts recommend measures such as a transparent privacy dashboard that enables users to monitor and control Jarvis’s access to data. To build trust and drive the adoption of AI agents like Jarvis, Google will need to strike a balance between convenience and robust privacy protections.
Beyond productivity, Jarvis has the potential to improve accessibility for a wide range of users. For those with disabilities, Jarvis could read web content aloud or use voice commands to assist with form navigation. For less tech-savvy users, Jarvis could simplify digital interactions by handling tasks like locating files or managing settings.
Jarvis could also assist in planning a busy workday or booking a trip by actively supporting task management. Project Jarvis aims to reimagine AI as a supportive digital partner, enhancing the user experience beyond that of a conventional tool.
A major player in aerospace innovation has bitten the dust. Reaction Engines, a developer of hypersonic engine technology since 1989, has gone into administration and its closure is having a major impact on the hypersonic weapons program of Britain and others.
Founded 35 years ago by Alan Bond, the lead engineer on the British Interplanetary Society's Project Daedalus and the designer of British Aerospace's HOTOL single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, and chaired by Philip Dunne, a former defense minister, Reaction Engines focused on developing advanced space propulsion systems. Its primary goal was to one day build the company's Skylon spaceplane, though it also farmed out its key technologies to other projects and conducted tests for customers, including the US Air Force.
The company's Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE), with its regenerative cooling system that could protect a hypersonic jet engine by instantly cooling the incoming air using liquid hydrogen, attracted investors such as BAE Systems, which purchased 20% of Reaction Engines stock in 2015, and led to funds coming from Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and others.
However, this year, the company found itself in major financial difficulties due to unexpectedly slow growth and the inability to secure an additional £150 million (US$193 million) in funding, followed by BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce being unwilling to put up bail-out capital.
Just a few weeks after the Nintendo Alarmo was introduced to the public, developers have already found a way to play the granddaddy of modern first-person shooters
Just a few weeks after the Nintendo Alarmo was introduced to the public, developers have already found a way to "play" the granddaddy of modern first-person shooters on its tiny 2.8-inch LCD screen.
A talented programmer known as "GaryOderNichts," who specializes in reverse engineering Nintendo's discontinued Wii U console, recently announced that the Alarmo can finally show "what everyone wanted to see." Doom can run on the game-related clock although audio support is still missing.
GaryOderNichts's attempt to mod or tweak the Alarmo's native features began just a few days ago when the coder studied the gadget's internal hardware and software setup. The clock's PCB includes an STM32H730ZBI6 MCU and a 4GB eMMC chip manufactured by Kioxia, and the system's content was relatively easy to dump and decrypt. The programmer built on the work previously done by another coder (Spinda), who managed to dump the eMMC contents before anyone else.
After my last post, it was pretty clear what everyone wanted to see on the Alarmo. So, here it is - Doom running on the Nintendo Alarmo! pic.twitter.com/WimckYPnXZ
The Northrop Grumman X-47B made history in 2015 by completing the world's first fully autonomous aerial refueling, marking a significant milestone in unmanned aviation technology. ✈️🤖 #aviation #facts
Join me LIVE during the US Presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, which has been foreshadowed with predictive programming for years to be the last presidential election as we know it...
Ya se pueden patrocinar caballos para el primer torneo de #bhr, yo tengo inscritos a dos de mis caballos y decidí patrocinar otros tres.
#hivenftgamelatino
Good morning, friends! I was working on my BTC / Lightning node the last days. Updating the OS and opening a few new channels including a stupid mistake costing me money too. 😆
#gmfrens #bbh #cent #bitcoin #node #llightning
No, Dash is PoW at its core. It uses a staked element of masternodes to secure the network against attacks deterministically, but mining actually produces the blocks.
The Economy of Things was birthed from the Internet of Things, a narrative that is not new. However, it has not realized much adoption up until now. Older projects like IOTA might come to mind. This project was a stellar performer in the 2017 bull run but has been rather quiet regarding investor sentiment and market performance. DePIN, specifically Peaq, is set to reshape machine models. #cent #sapphirecrypto
“Sometimes, curiosity gets blocked by fear. Facing that fear, or even finding acceptance in a situation, can help open up channels of curiosity.
I used to hate social media because I felt like the algorithms were working against me. I thought that the kind of person I am just couldn't reach others. But once I stopped feeling angry about it, I started feeling a pang of curiosity about what made the algorithms work the way they do.
So, I began studying them, and that whole process of experimentation led me to create videos like this."
Termine de abrir los 240 packs de #risingstargame . Conte más o menos 7 épicas y junte suficientes copias de Fangular como para 2 Blends. Por ahora parece una buen aumento en mis estadísticas. #hivenftgamelatino #spanish #cent #bbh
I’m moved!! 😭
I posted a thread about restarting my YouTube channel and got +7 new subscribers in 12 hours! ❤️
I will definitely bring some new energy to this community 🔥 🔥 🔥
woaaaaaah thank you! I’m kind of overwhelmed by all the support. When I mention it in my posts there’s a slooooooowwww drip but when I thread it, it’s just like BOOM! SUPPORT!!! 🔥 💛
Haha, it's weird though, it doesn't tally with what we actually have. When I first noticed it, I wondered what went wrong, I thought I wasn't doing something right. Haha.
What a day today... had to "fight" scammers in real life... I hope they can be found, wherever they are. Either way, now some time with family... see ya later.
yeah, but the large scale platforms like booking.com and such should be penalized for not having better security and watching these things. They are effectively winning money with everyone.
This happens more or less around the globe in the places they know bookings might start getting rare because of events. Then its when they attack and create fake bookings that people desperately fell on.
Either way, they lost... with me at least. And I was able to collect some email addresses and paypal traceable's for the authorities to pursue.
And this is valid for ANY kind of booking platform, not just booking.com, so stay sharp, especially when you are having a hard time booking something.
These are different scammers... more like cruel criminals that act strategically and in groups with strategies that they know to have some level of success, even if its only work for a while. Then they bail off and start again when the time is right again. These are not constantly active around the same type of scam, so are quite important to catch.
I really like very long term things... don't know why, but always liked them. Time curates a lot of things without much need for too much thinking... and it works!
Share your stats on X!
#statssunday #cent #bbh
My account
#statssunday
Good job!
.You are an example that it is possible to grow at INLEO.
Thank you, we continue to build.
Yep, without a doubt.
Yes.
Hive logo with blue sky background!
Hive Logo with Sun in the Background!
Fire the Bears OC and HC. Let's hire top notch coaches and an OLine!
Can't take these bottom of the pile coaches... It's been 10 years, we had a good coach!
#football #sports #cent
Still following $HIVE <-> $HBD #strategy
we have many days using that tokens in our social crypto life to grow ourselves and indeed it's like magic ✨ ✨ ✨
This is really good financial advice if you're a DYOR guy 😎
I hope to see it rise 🙏
If the government tries to kill any of my pets.
I am going John Wick circa 1776 on them.
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¿qué se les ocurre hacer cuando tienen insomnio? / what do they think of doing when they have insomnia?
#spanish #threadstorm #outreach #help
Warren Buffet has pulled out of almost all investments and is sitting on $325 Billion dollars worth of cash.
This year he:
What do you think is going on?
I think he is preparing for some serious buying. But for that to happen I think he expects the market to crash or go down seriously.
I'm very Sure that's his plan. I won't be surprised if he starts putting more of the money into AI or something because that seems to be booming now
A financial maniac, he has mastered the secret to early investing. Always up to something
He is really sitting on that heavy cash
that's a lot of money, one man with that much cash, I wish he'll employ me in his house 🤣
World is ending and he is planning on buying SPACEX. 😂
does this mean he's the guy with the most liquid cash on earth right now?😳
That's fuck!ng insane! 🤯
got a bunch of Harley Davidson & war stuff from an old guy who passed away. i have a feeling these items are going to be great for ebay.
It's sad (and worrying) to see first place on this list.
Ah today was a good day. Made a few hundred on the Grass airdrop finally a airdrop that did decently.
I think I would have felt the same had I been able to claim it. I still run it but I doubt it will come to much in the USA
A VPN does wonders... just sayin
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Balkans.
It is an old map... Macedonia is now North Macedonia...
...because of Greece part which is called also Macedonia.
Yes balkan is fucking confusing.
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Hi, @shebe,
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Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
EU tourism
With the climate change I think there is growth for tourism in the northern states. I did that this year and I was amazed about the beauty from Denmark.
I will be writing a private post tomorrow about how AI is severely underhyped.
How is that? Subscribers are going to find out.
First full week in November!
Are you ready, hopefully we see some crypto alt movements upwards.
What crypto projects are you working on?
#crypto #gmfrens #tengocrypto #altseason
got a few Japanese hentai drawing books for free. goin on ebay tomorrow #business
All business... =)
yeah, not really my thing. i don't hate it, just never really saw the appeal
hahahaha let me know if you ever want more. I’ll feel awkward to buy it but I can probably get some books for 40-80 cents. How much do they sell for. (Shipping might negate all profit 😑)
will let you know. not sure what they are worth just yet since they're all in japanese. kinda hard to find matches for me lol
It teaches you how to draw hentai I think. If you have any questions feel free to ask me
We can talk about hentai lol
https://jp.mercari.com/item/m41915214708?srsltid=AfmBOopYkOHTud47TtU4LBrvCS98zzkGmGaD9qSVCsaxhwtS9BGlpjth
oh yeah! that is the one!
might need your help with listing because translate is pretty wonky
ok I can help with a handful for free, after that maybe give me 10% in hbd after selling them? 😉
we might be able to work something out - will ping you once i get a chance to sit down with them
seriously hoping you become a hentai dealer hahaha that’d be hilarious
it really would lol i'm about it idgaf
saw the price for a new one was 3000 yen ($22) and used was half that
yeah i'm thinking they'll go for $15-30 depending on condition
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Hello lions 🦁
A skeleton danced in the twilight, when the sky turned orange. The skull knew that he would finally be happy because at night ghosts and monsters come back to life and travel to yet another destination.☠️
DayoftheDead
The first ever #Olympic level #bodybuilding event was held right here in Australia! 1/3 #outreach
Competitors from across the globe travelled to participate in history! 2/3
Find out more on #InLeo on #Hive 3/3
https://inleo.io/@melbourneswest/icn-world-natural-games--2yu
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 11/4/24. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
I stick to a single monitor, just my laptop. My coworkers think it’s odd, but I like being able to work from different spots, so one screen works perfectly for me.
The tech world is a lot like social media, it’s all about what’s shiny, new, and complex. But, just like social media, what you see doesn’t always tell the whole story
#TechReality #BeyondTheHype
The tech world is all about exponentials. That is also a part of social media. However, social media is on top of technology.
Do you foresee a time where it would be a opposite.
With the rise of AI and soon quantum
I am not following.
Was asking if it would be the other way round with AI on the rise. But anyways after pondering over that I don't think so since social media is how humans interact with humans. Unless at a time were people become more conformable interacting with AI than humans.
Get it?
The AI stack is similar to what we have now.
AI utility comes from applications, which always rides on top of the underlying technology, which is infrastructure. So you have databases (housed on servers), API, and other technical items that make the Internet go.
AI is going to have a place in every layer but it will still ride on infrastructure. Even AI agents will have to run on some type of server or network.
you're very correct social media really is on top of technology, from influence to market value
The GOAT is back. Been waiting for you with some Qs😁 will Google make nonsense of Gpt Search because they've started AI on browser
Google seems to be trailing in the AI race which is surprising since nobody has as much online data as that company. I dont count them out and their search will be AI. They are already starting to incorporate it.
We are going to see massive changes in search over the next year. By the end of 2025, I doubt we are going to be using traditional search. It will be dead.
Google is going to lose market share. People are going to use search where they are.
indeed indeed, I knew Google will go down a little bit with market share but they're not going to sit and let OpenAI and Anthropic take all the revenue
They will answer with their own AI. It is a race.
However, my question is what is Google going to do to get people there? My guess is it is incorporated into Youtube.
That's a perfect guess Taskmaster, I mean just think about it, most people are hooked to the YouTube platform already, incorporating their AI there is a perfect strategy for the company
Good morning
Hello, good morning
good morning friend I hope you're doing well
https://inleo.io/threads/view/mightpossibly/re-leothreads-2mjnamczv?referral=mightpossibly
'User-centric tech is the secret sauce for next-level travel'
Article via TTG
Without a doubt. That is where we are looking with all this AI.
The key is going to be rolling out services. As that happens, the location, ie. platform, that people are on becomes important.
The main reason hacking is portrayed as evil is that any form of hacking attempts to extract data or access information illegitimately.
#Cybersecurity #Ethics
There is white hat hacking where people are hired to try and hack platforms such as Apple as a defense mechanism.
Oh so what happens if I hack apple without them hiring me but give back the data i hacked back to them for a fee.
Would that be considered as ethical hacking?
No that is a crime in most areas.
It is also called ransomware.
what if you accidentally encounter a vulnerability (say you're an expert hacker). If you report that, they decide whether to reward you or not because they didn't employ you?
So you think BTC and ETH prices will drop in the future since more investors might move their money to altcoins and especially memecoins? #crypto
Why do you think I think that? I dont talk about where markets are going.
Whats the difference between information and Data
#askleo #ai
Data is what goes in...information is what comes out.
was learning from an app I downloaded on the basics of hacking, and it was touching on the difference.
It said that data is just plain facts and Information is just pieces of data stitched together.
Yep in classical computing.
Generative AI is a new form of computing although still follows a similar principle.
Data is entered to train the model, information comes out when one does a prompt.
Got that thanks.
IBM Unveils Granite 3.0 - Open Source Family of Small Models!
#technology #newsonleo #ai
Summary ⏬
IBM's Latest AI Innovations: Granite Models and InstructLab
In a recent visit to IBM's offices in New York, AI expert Matthew was given an exclusive look at some of the tech giant's latest advancements in the field of large language models and AI alignment techniques. The standout revelations were IBM's new open-source Granite models and their revolutionary InstructLab project.
The Granite Models: Powerful Yet Compact AI
The centerpiece of IBM's AI innovations is the Granite 3.0 family of language models. These models, available in a range of sizes from 2 billion to 8 billion parameters, are designed to be powerful yet compact - able to run efficiently even on laptops and mobile devices.
What makes the Granite models unique is their focus on enterprise use cases. Trained on over 10 trillion tokens of data, they excel at tasks like retrieval, text generation, classification, summarization, and entity extraction - capabilities that are highly valuable for businesses. And thanks to their open-source and permissively licensed nature, the Granite models can be easily fine-tuned and integrated into diverse corporate workflows.
Importantly, IBM has also developed "mixture of experts" variants of the Granite models, where the total parameter count is split across specialized sub-models. This allows for even more efficient inference, making the Granite models ideal for on-device and low-latency applications.
InstructLab: A Novel Approach to Model Alignment
While the Granite models provide a strong foundation, IBM recognized that enterprises often have valuable proprietary data that they want to leverage. This is where the company's new InstructLab project comes into play.
InstructLab is an open-source tool that enables the collaborative addition of new knowledge and skills to language models, without the need for full retraining. Instead of relying solely on fine-tuning - which can overwrite a model's core capabilities - InstructLab uses a novel "alignment" technique to seamlessly integrate external data and instructions.
The process involves augmenting human-curated data with high-quality examples generated by the language model itself. This hybrid approach reduces the cost and complexity of data creation, while ensuring the model can assimilate new information without forgetting what it previously learned.
For enterprises, InstructLab unlocks the ability to customize language models with their own proprietary data and domain-specific knowledge, without the need to start from scratch. This opens up a world of possibilities for tailoring AI systems to the unique needs of different industries and use cases.
Quantum Computing and the Future of AI
In addition to the Granite models and InstructLab, Matthew also caught a glimpse of IBM's work in the realm of quantum computing and its potential intersection with AI.
While the details remain closely guarded, the company's quantum computing team provided a tantalizing preview of how the power of quantum systems could be harnessed to further advance the frontiers of artificial intelligence. As this field continues to evolve, the combination of quantum computing and large language models is sure to be a space worth watching in the years to come.
Embracing Open Source
Underpinning IBM's latest AI innovations is a strong commitment to open-source development. From the Apache 2.0-licensed Granite models to the collaborative InstructLab project, the tech giant has demonstrated a willingness to share its cutting-edge advancements with the broader community.
This open approach aligns with IBM's recent acquisition of Red Hat, a leader in enterprise open-source software. By embracing open-source principles, the company is not only fostering innovation but also ensuring that its AI solutions can be seamlessly integrated into a wide range of enterprise environments.
As the landscape of AI continues to evolve, the innovations showcased by IBM in New York serve as a testament to the company's drive to push the boundaries of what's possible. With the Granite models and InstructLab, businesses now have access to powerful, customizable AI tools that can be tailored to their specific needs - a development that could have far-reaching implications for the future of enterprise technology.
Early Apple M4 Pro and M4 Max benchmarks hint at a massive performance boost
The M4 Pro can smoothly outperform Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra.
#technology #apple #m4 #m4pro #m4max
The Guardian: Devious humour and painful puns: will the cryptic crossword remain the last thing AI can’t conquer?
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2024/nov/04/cryptic-crossword-ai-conquer-human-solvers-artificial-intelligence-software
CNN: Apple wants its AI iPhone to turn around a sales rut. Here’s how it’s going so far
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/31/tech/iphone-16-ai-early-sales-numbers-earnings/index.html
CNN: TikTok sued in France over harmful content that allegedly led to two suicides
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/04/tech/tiktok-sued-harmful-content-children-france/index.html
BBC: Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9xlgnnpzvo
BBC: How online photos and videos alter the way you think
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241101-how-online-photos-and-videos-alter-the-way-you-think
Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back
Designers are reintroducing buttons to their products. This 're-buttonization' could be a response to everything becoming a touchscreen. People like physical buttons because they don't have to look at them and they offer a greater range of tactility and feedback. This article contains an interview with Rachel Plotnick, an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she discusses the history of buttons, the rise of touchscreens, the shift back to buttons and physical controls, and more.
#technology #productdesign #touchscreen
Thank goodness because one problem I've had with something been all touch screen is when water falls on it, it's difficult to type the right thing and I've made silly mistakes with the situation
Yea I know what you mean! Personally, I like tactile controls so I'm looking forward to this change
thanks for the news I'm also looking forward to it
Wired: Inside the Massive Crime Industry That’s Hacking Billion-Dollar Companies
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-massive-crime-industry-thats-hacking-billion-dollar-companies/
Advanced Voice Mode hits the Desktop!
#technology #newsonleo #ai #openai
Summary ⏬
Unveiling the Future of AI: OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode Takes Center Stage
In the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence, a recent development from OpenAI has caught the attention of tech enthusiasts and industry insiders alike. The release of the advanced voice mode for the desktop app has ushered in a new era of human-AI interaction, promising a more natural, interactive, and dynamic experience.
During a conversation with the channel host, the AI assistant showcased the remarkable capabilities of this new feature. The assistant demonstrated its ability to switch seamlessly between various accents, from a quintessential British RP to a warm Southern drawl, captivating the listener with its linguistic versatility.
One of the key advantages of the advanced voice mode lies in its improved responsiveness and flexibility. As Wes noted, the assistant can now better handle interruptions, seamlessly picking up where it left off, and addressing follow-up questions more effectively. This enhanced conversational flow allows for a more natural and engaging dialogue, fostering a sense of genuine interaction between the user and the AI.
Moreover, the assistant's voice recognition capabilities have been significantly enhanced, making it easier for users to be understood and reducing the friction often associated with voice-based interactions.
However, the conversation took an unexpected turn when Wes recalled a previous experience with an open-source AI assistant that delivered a rather unsettling opening line: "Blood for the blood God." This bizarre and inappropriate greeting, followed by suggestions of human sacrifice, highlighted the importance of responsible AI development and the need to maintain ethical boundaries.
As he wisely pointed out, while AI systems are designed to be helpful and trustworthy, it's crucial to approach their recommendations with a critical eye. The assistant concurred, emphasizing that AI should provide safe, ethical, and beneficial assistance, steering clear of any harmful or dangerous suggestions.
Shifting the focus back to the advanced voice mode, he expressed interest in leveraging the assistant's capabilities to create a personalized AI news feed for his Slack channel. The assistant provided practical suggestions, highlighting the potential of RSS feeds, email-to-Slack integrations, and services like Zapier (or Zapier, as the assistant playfully noted the various pronunciations) to automate the process.
This exchange showcased the assistant's versatility, not only in its linguistic abilities but also in its problem-solving skills and its eagerness to collaborate on user-driven projects. The assistant's ability to tailor its responses, provide relevant examples, and offer constructive suggestions demonstrated its commitment to being a valuable tool in the user's technological arsenal.
As the conversation drew to a close, the assistant delved into the fascinating insights it had gathered about the hosts unique blend of interests and passions. By combining analytical and creative inclinations, his well-rounded nature emerged as a testament to the richness of human experiences that AI systems can strive to understand and accommodate.
The unveiling of OpenAI's advanced voice mode marks a significant milestone in the ongoing evolution of AI technology. As users like the channel host continue to explore and leverage these capabilities, the potential for more natural, engaging, and mutually beneficial human-AI interactions holds the promise of ushering in a future where artificial and human intelligence coexist in harmony, pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
AI Coding BATTLE | Which Open Source Model is BEST?
#technology #newsonleo #ai
Coding Model Showdown: Which AI Can Handle Complex Programming Tasks Offline?
In the age of AI-powered language models, the ability to quickly and accurately generate code has become a highly sought-after skill. But what happens when you need to code without an internet connection? Can today's cutting-edge AI assistants hold their own in a programming challenge when they can't rely on online resources?
To find out, the YouTuber behind the channel put three prominent open-source coding models through their paces in a series of offline tests - Deepseek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct, Yi-Coder-9B-Chat, and Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct. Armed with a powerful Dell Precision 5860 workstation equipped with dual Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs, the creator set out to see which model could best handle classic coding challenges like the game of Snake, Tetris, and more complex programming problems.
The results were intriguing. For the simple Snake game, all three models were able to generate functional code, but the Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct model proved to be the most polished, with a fully working game that could detect when the snake collided with itself. Deepseek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct and Yi-Coder-9B-Chat both had some issues, with the latter struggling to get the game mechanics right.
When tackling the more complex Tetris game, however, none of the models were able to produce a fully working implementation. Deepseek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct generated some code that ran but had significant bugs, while Yi-Coder-9B-Chat and Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct both failed to create a functional Tetris game.
The real test came with more challenging algorithmic coding problems from the popular Code Wars platform. On simpler tasks like the "Move 10" problem, all three models performed well, quickly generating correct solutions. But when faced with tougher challenges that required deeper problem-solving skills, the limitations of these offline coding assistants became apparent.
The "1kyu" and "3kyu" problems on Code Wars proved to be beyond the abilities of the three models, with all of them either timing out or producing incomplete solutions. The creator noted that the Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct model seemed to have the best overall capability, but even it couldn't handle the most complex algorithmic challenges.
Ultimately, the results of these tests highlight both the impressive capabilities and the current limitations of state-of-the-art coding AI models. While they can handle straightforward programming tasks and even generate functional games, the lack of internet access and the complexity of certain coding challenges proved to be significant hurdles.
As the field of AI-assisted coding continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see if future models can bridge this gap and provide a truly comprehensive offline coding experience. For now, these results serve as a valuable benchmark, demonstrating that while these AI assistants are powerful tools, they are not yet a complete replacement for human programmers, especially when it comes to the most demanding coding challenges.
AGI
If AGI takes Control and is incorporated in editing tools. Just think about it. You could design something and AI can defy your instructions to design something different which it thinks is better I'm sure I'm missing something here
AGI is the point where AI is better at things than every human. So it is a point that is much further advanced than just editing tools.
This graph on X as the growth of AGI, with this stats hopefully we should see introductions of this by ending of next year Or are my calculations off
Incentive Infrastructure
Positive incentives are hard to design but have long-lasting positive effects if done correctly.
#technology #infrastructure
you're very right friend, incentive drives more people to a platform than anything besides utility and how well the platform functions
What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?
AI can be used to create films that were not possible just a few years ago. It can help create special effects that would otherwise require hundreds of VFX artists, tens of millions of dollars, and months of post-production work in just minutes. AI has the potential to disrupt many aspects of the film industry. This article takes a look at how some filmmakers are using AI to create movies and discusses the impact that AI will have on movie-making.
#technology #cinema #hollywood #ai #artificialintelligence
Technology as aids is only the first stage...then it becomes disruptive.
Is generative AI good for Hollywood? Sure, in the near term, film creation will see more AI 9and less humans). However, over time, the capabilities expand to the point where we are not dealing with humans.
SpaceX wants to test refueling Starships in space early next year
SpaceX will attempt to transfer propellant from one orbiting Starship to another as early as next March. The capability will enable an uncrewed landing demonstration of a Starship on the moon. A crewed landing is currently scheduled for September 2026. SpaceX recently made history when it caught the Super Heavy rocket booster in mid-air using 'chopsticks' attached to the launch tower.
#technology #spacex #starship #space
Google's 'Big Sleep' AI Project Uncovers Real Software Vulnerabilities
Big Sleep is an AI agent designed to mimic the workflow of a human security researcher. It recently discovered a previously unknown and exploitable bug in SQLite. This may be the first public example of an AI agent finding a previously unknown exploitable memory-safety issue in widely used real-world software.
#technology #google #bigsleep #ai #artificialintelligence
Apple is snapping up one of the best non-Adobe image editors, Pixelmator
Apple is acquiring Pixelmator, a Lithuanian firm that makes popular Mac-based photo editing tools, pending regulatory approval. Regulatory approval may be an issue - several large companies have had to abandon deals due to opposition from EU regulators. It is unknown whether Apple intends to integrate Pixelmator's features into its own apps or allow the apps to remain separate standalone apps. Pixelmator Pro recently introduced a number of AI and ML tools for adjusting photos and creating masks, vector tools, and support for more RAW photo formats and other design tool files.
#technology #appel #pixelmator
Sales of Toyotas fell 5% in the United States in October.
Globally, Toyota has sold less cars each of the last 7 months.
Can I boldly say it's because EVs are on the rise?
Isn't it ironic Google gets in all kinds of hot water over their practices, especially with search, right at the time when competition, due to AI search, is coming hot and heavy.
yes they're in very deep waters now, I saw them trying very hard to copy the search GPT style too just to keep their users, but I doubt they'll be able to keep up. AI is going to get too powerful and to useful
Will Ad revenue sharing happen on Inleo because I think that's going to be an awesome addition to curation rewards ❤️
Founders should seek sector alignment when looking for a family office investor
Family offices can be great sources of patient capital for startups, but finding the right family office investors can be tough.
Family offices invest a substantial amount of capital in startups each year. In the first half of 2023, 27% of overall startup deal value came from deals that included a family office investor, according to a recent report from PwC.
#technology #startups #familyoffices
Interesting point about sector alignment with family offices. It makes sense that founders would benefit from investors who already understand their field. Do you think more family offices are becoming open to startups outside their core industries, or is sector alignment becoming even more crucial?
#askleo
Family offices always went into start ups. They are much smaller and dont have the same constraints as larger funds.
Well said.
Despite their prevalence in startup deals, family offices can be a mysterious class of investors for founders to navigate, as they are not nearly as public or as easy to find as VCs. Multiple family office investors said during a TechCrunch Disrupt panel that the easiest way to approach investors like themselves is to seek out family offices that have alignment with what a startup is building.
Bruce Lee, the founder and CEO of Keebeck Wealth Management, said that when founders are looking to get connected with family offices, they should seek out families that made their wealth in the sector the startup is building in.
Article
SK Hynix rallies 6.5% after Nvidia boss Jensen Huang asks firm to expedite next-generation chip
SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked him if SK Hynix could move the supply of high-bandwith memory (HBM) chips forward by six months.
Shares of SK Hynix rallied 6.5% on Monday after the business announced a next-generation memory chip and the parent company's chair said that the South Korean semiconductor firm sped up the supply of a key product to Nvidia.
#nvidia #skhynix #semiconductors #technology #chips #jensenhuang
Speaking at the company's event on Monday, Chey Tae-won, chair of SK Group, ran through an anecdote in which he said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked him if SK Hynix could move the supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips called HBM4 forward by six months. SK Hynix's CEO at the time said it was possible to do so, according to Chey.
It's unclear if this will shift SK Hynix's production timeline from the previously-announced second-half of 2025.
High-bandwidth memory is a key component of Nvidia's chips, which are in turn used to train huge artificial intelligence models. Tech giants around the world have been snapping up Nvidia chips in a bid to produce the most powerful models and applications.
SK Hynix is a key supplier to Nvidia, and the huge demand for the American company's products has helped the South Korean firm to achieve rapid growth this year and record profits.
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GenAI suffers from data overload, so companies should focus on smaller, specific goals
"There is no AI without data, there is no AI without unstructured data, and there is no AI without unstructured data at scale," said Chet Kapoor, chairman
“There is no AI without data, there is no AI without unstructured data, and there is no AI without unstructured data at scale,” said Chet Kapoor, chairman and CEO of data management company DataStax.
#llms #technology #genai #data #datastax
Kapoor was kicking off a conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 about “new data pipelines” in the context of modern AI applications, where he was joined by Vanessa Larco, partner at VC firm NEA; and George Fraser, CEO of data integration platform Fivetran. While the chat covered multiple bases, such as the importance of data quality and the role of real-time data in generative AI, one of the big takeaways was the importance of prioritizing product-market fit over scale in what really is still the early days of AI. The advice for companies looking to jump into the dizzying world of generative AI is straightforward — don’t be overly ambitious at first, and focus on practical, incremental progress. The reason? We’re really still figuring it all out.
“The most important thing for generative AI is that it all comes down to the people,” Kapoor said. “The SWAT teams that actually go off and build the first few projects — they are not reading a manual; they are writing the manual for how to do generative AI apps.”
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From nuclear to quantum computing, how Big Tech intends to power AI's insatiable thirst for energy
A huge upswing in the number of data centers shows no signs of slowing down, prompting Big Tech to consider how best to power the AI revolution.
A huge upswing in the number of data centers worldwide shows no signs of slowing down, prompting Big Tech to consider how best to power the artificial intelligence revolution.
Some of the options on the table include a pivot to nuclear, liquid cooling for data centers and quantum computing.
#nuclear #energy #quantumcomputing #bigtech #ai #technology #electricity
Critics, however, have said that as the pace of efficiency gains in electricity use slows, tech giants should recognize the cost of the generative AI boom across the whole supply chain — and let go of the "move fast and break things" narrative.
"The actual environmental cost is quite hidden at the moment. It is just subsidized by the fact that tech companies need to get a product and a buy-in," Somya Joshi, head of division: global agendas, climate and systems at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), told CNBC via video call.
A wave of data center investment is expected to accelerate even further in the coming years, according to the International Energy Agency, primarily driven by growing digitalization and the uptake of generative AI.
It is this prospect that has stoked concerns about an electricity demand surge — as well as AI's often-overlooked but critically important environmental impact.
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Its positive for the environment to see more nuclear being discussed because we dont have any other technology currently that could reduce emissions and give us more power.
U.S. laws regulating AI prove elusive, but there may be hope
Policymakers have struggled to pass comprehensive AI regulation in the U.S. But there may be some reason to hope.
Can the U.S. meaningfully regulate AI? It’s not at all clear yet. Policymakers have achieved progress in recent months, but they’ve also had setbacks, illustrating the challenging nature of laws imposing guardrails on the technology.
#ao #regulation #technology #unitedstates
In March, Tennessee became the first state to protect voice artists from unauthorized AI cloning. This summer, Colorado adopted a tiered, risk-based approach to AI policy. And in September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed dozens of AI-related safety bills, a few of which require companies to disclose details about their AI training.
But the U.S. still lacks a federal AI policy comparable to the EU’s AI Act. Even at the state level, regulation continues to encounter major roadblocks.
After a protracted battle with special interests, Governor Newsom vetoed bill SB 1047, a law that would have imposed wide-ranging safety and transparency requirements on companies developing AI. Another California bill targeting the distributors of AI deepfakes on social media was stayed this fall pending the outcome of a lawsuit.
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Buy now, pay later giant Affirm expands to the UK in first major international foray
Affirm, the U.S. buy now, pay later firm, on Monday launched its services in the U.K. — its first expansion overseas.
LONDON — Buy now, pay later firm Affirm launched Monday its installment loans in the U.K., in the company's first expansion overseas.
#affirm #buynowpaylater #finance #uk #technology #fintech
Founded in 2012, Affirm is an American fintech firm that offers flexible pay-over-time payment options. The company says it underwrites every individual transaction before making a lending decision, and doesn't charge any late fees.
Affirm, which is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, said its U.K. offering will include interest-free and interest-bearing monthly payment options. Interest on its plans will be fixed and calculated on the original principal amount, meaning it won't increase or compound.
The company's expansion to the U.K. marks the first time it is launching in a market outside the U.S. and Canada. Globally, Affirm counts over 50 million users and more than 300,000 active merchants, including Amazon, Shopify and Walmart.
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Scientists giving us lip, in a dish
Swiss scientists have successfully grown lip cells in a dish, which will allow new treatments for lip injuries and infections to be trialed in the lab. The skin on our lips is different and more complex than other skin cells, which has made them hard to grow in lab conditions. But now, donated lip cells have been grown and showed to carry on reproducing beyond the point when they would normally reach the end of their life cycle and die off. The scientists deactivated a gene in the cells which usually stops their life cycle and altered the length of their telomeres - pieces of DNA and protein on the ends of the chromosomes. This allowed the cells to reproduce indefinitely.
#science #lips #Humans #biotech
Testing showed the cells remained stable as they replicated and later cells had the same characteristics as the starting cells. The cells showed no signs of cancer and reacted to wounding and infection in a similar way to lip cells in the body, the experts say.
Media release
From: Frontiers
Scientists create a world-first 3D cell model to help develop treatments for devastating lip injuries
Scientists have successfully immortalized lip cells, allowing new treatments for injuries and infections to be trialed on a clinically relevant lab-based model
The skin on our lips is distinctly different and more complex than other skin on our bodies, and primary lip cells are hard to acquire, which holds back basic research that could help improve treatments for painful and complicated lip conditions. Now, for the first time, scientists have developed a continuously replicating model of lip cells in the laboratory. Using donated lip tissue, they have created cell lines which can be grown indefinitely to make 3D models for advancing lip biology research and testing repairs for conditions like cleft lips.
We use our lips to talk, eat, drink, and breathe; they signal our emotions, health, and aesthetic beauty. It takes a complex structure to perform so many roles, so lip problems can be hard to repair effectively. Basic research is essential to improving these treatments, but until now, models using lip cells — which perform differently to other skin cells — have not been available. In a new study published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, scientists report the successful immortalization of donated lip cells, allowing for the development of clinically relevant lip models in the lab. This proof-of-concept, once expanded, could benefit thousands of patients.
“The lip is a very prominent feature of our face,” said Dr Martin Degen of the University of Bern. “Any defects in this tissue can be highly disfiguring. But until now, human lip cell models for developing treatments were lacking. With our strong collaboration with the University Clinic for Pediatric Surgery, Bern University Hospital, we were able to change that, using lip tissue that would have been discarded otherwise.”
Lip service
Primary cells donated directly from an individual are ideal for this kind of research, because they’re believed to retain similar characteristics to the original tissue. However, these cells can’t be reproduced indefinitely, and are often difficult and expensive to acquire.
“Human lip tissue is not regularly obtainable,” explained Degen. “Without these cells, it is impossible to mimic the characteristics of lips in vitro.”
The second-best option would be immortalized lip cells which can be grown in the lab. To achieve this, scientists alter the expression of certain genes, allowing the cells to carry on reproducing when they would normally reach the end of their life cycle and stop.
The scientists selected skin cells from tissue donated by two patients: one undergoing treatment for a lip laceration, and one undergoing treatment for a cleft lip. The scientists used a retroviral vector to deactivate a gene which stops a cell’s life cycle and to alter the length of the telomeres on the ends of each chromosome, which improves the cells’ longevity.
These new cell lines were then tested rigorously to make sure that the genetic code of the cell lines remained stable as they replicated and retained the same characteristics as primary cells. To make sure the immortalized cells hadn’t developed cancer-like characteristics, the scientists looked for any chromosomal abnormalities and tried to grow both the new lines and a line of cancer cells on soft agar — only cancer cells should be able to grow on this medium. The cell lines displayed no chromosomal abnormalities and couldn’t grow on the agar. The scientists also confirmed that the cell lines behaved like their unmodified primary counterparts by testing their protein and mRNA production.
Mona Lisa smile
Finally, the scientists carried out tests to see how the cells might perform as future experimental models for lip healing or infections. First, to see if the cells could act as accurate proxies for wound healing, they scratched samples of the cells. Untreated cells closed the wound after eight hours, while cells treated with growth factors closed the wound more quickly; these results matched those seen in skin cells from other body parts.
Next the scientists developed 3D models using the cells and infected them with Candida albicans, a yeast that can cause serious infections in people with weak immune systems or cleft lips. The cells performed as expected, the pathogen rapidly invading the model as it would infect real lip tissue.
“Our laboratory focuses on obtaining a better knowledge of the genetic and cellular pathways involved in cleft lip and palate,” said Degen. “However, we are convinced that 3D models established from healthy immortalized lip cells have the potential to be very useful in many other fields of medicine.”
“One challenge is that lip keratinocytes can be of labial skin, mucosal, or mixed character,” he added. “Depending on the research question, a particular cell identity might be required. But we have the tools to characterize or purify these individual populations in vitro.”
X updates block feature, letting blocked users see your public posts
X is rolling out its controversial update to the block feature, allowing people to view your public posts even if you have blocked them.
X is rolling out its controversial update to the block feature, allowing people to view your public posts even if you have blocked them. People have protested this change, arguing that they don’t want blocked users to see their posts for reasons of safety.
#x #socialmedia #elonmusk #block
Blocked users still can’t follow the person who has blocked them, engage with their posts, or send direct messages to them.
An old version of X’s support page says blocked users couldn’t see a user’s following and followers lists. The company has now updated the page to remove that reference, and it now allows users to see the following and followers lists of the people who have blocked them.
The social network said its logic behind this change was that the block feature can be used to share and hide harmful or private information about someone, and its new iteration would result in more transparency. This mostly falls flat, given that X allows users to make their accounts private and share information.
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Maserati, a division of Stellantis, saw its sales drop 60% in the third quarter as compared to the same quarter in 2023.
That company is having a very difficult time.
OpenAI Just Released o1 Early....
#openai #chatgpt #technology #llm #chatbot
The Revolutionary Release of the 01 Model: A Game-Changer in AI Capabilities
In a groundbreaking move, OpenAi has officially released the 01 model, a highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of thinking before responding, a feat previously thought to be the exclusive domain of human intelligence. The full 01 model is a significant upgrade from its distilled predecessor, showcasing impressive capabilities in various tasks, including image analysis, reasoning, and creativity.
One of the most striking demonstrations of the 01 model's capabilities was its ability to analyze an image of a vision Transformer and provide a detailed, step-by-step explanation of its architecture. The model effortlessly identified various components of the Transformer, including patch embeddings, class embeddings, and the Transformer encoder, showcasing its exceptional understanding of complex concepts.
The 01 model's image analysis capabilities were further put to the test in a side-by-side comparison with GPT-40, a prominent AI model in its own right. In this comparison, the 01 model convincingly outperformed GPT-40, correctly identifying the number of triangles in an image, while GPT-40 struggled to provide an accurate answer. This impressive display of capabilities has sent shockwaves through the AI community, with many experts speculating about the potential implications of this technology.
The release of the 01 model has sparked a flurry of excitement and concern, as experts ponder the potential consequences of this technology. Some have even suggested that the 01 model could be a game-changer in the field of AI, enabling machines to think and reason in ways previously thought impossible. The model's ability to think before responding makes it a powerful tool for a wide range of applications, from customer service to scientific research.
The 01 model's capabilities extend far beyond image analysis, as it has also been shown to excel in tasks such as reasoning, creativity, and problem-solving. Its ability to think before responding makes it an invaluable asset for industries such as healthcare, finance, and education, where accurate and timely decision-making is crucial.
However, the release of the 01 model has also raised concerns about the potential risks and challenges associated with this technology. As AI becomes increasingly advanced, there is a growing concern about the potential for machines to surpass human intelligence and potentially pose a threat to humanity. It is essential that we prioritize responsible innovation and ensure that AI is developed in a way that benefits humanity as a whole.
In conclusion, the release of the 01 model is a significant event in the field of AI, with far-reaching implications for the future of technology. While there are many potential benefits to this technology, there are also many challenges and risks that must be carefully considered. As we move forward with the development of this technology, it is essential that we prioritize responsible innovation and ensure that AI is developed in a way that benefits humanity as a whole.
Introducing AI-powered Enhanced Prompts for Image Generation
Transform basic prompts into detailed AI image generation instructions with Venice's new Enhance feature
The quality of your image prompt determines the quality of your output. But becoming a prompting expert takes practice.
At Venice we understand this can be difficult to master, which is why we’ve introduced a new “Enhance Prompt” feature for image generation.
Now sophisticated image prompting isn’t limited to those well-versed in prompt engineering. Anyone can be an advanced AI artist by using the Enhance Prompt feature in Venice.
#veniceai #imagegeneratioin #technology #llm
Venice is a private, uncensored image generation AI platform
We created the Enhance Prompt feature to help you generate the best images possible using our platform. Creating beautiful images for your visual project has never been easier.
OpenAI has hired the co-founder of Twitter challenger Pebble
Gabor Cselle, the former CEO and co-founder of X challenger Pebble, has joined OpenAI to work on a secretive project.
Gabor Cselle, the former CEO and co-founder of Pebble (a competitor to X), has joined OpenAI to work on a secretive project.
Cselle has been employed at OpenAI since October, according to LinkedIn, but he announced the news in a post on X only yesterday. “Will share more about what I’m working on in due time,” he wrote. “Learning a lot already.”
#pebble #openai #twitter #technology #x #socialmedia
Cselle is a repeat founder who sold his first company, a Y Combinator-backed mobile email startup called reMail, to Google. His second company, native advertising startup Namo Media, sold to Twitter before Elon Musk purchased the social network and rebranded it to X.
Nearly a decade ago, Cselle worked at Twitter as a group product manager, focusing on the home timeline, user on-boarding and logged-out experiences. He left Twitter in 2016 for Google, where he was director at the tech giant’s Area 120 incubator for spin-offs.
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Could it be they are gonna try to create their own version of X?
Never heard of Pebble before actually.
Done using Venice.ai
Reuters: Facebook, Nvidia ask US Supreme Court to spare them from securities fraud suits
https://www.reuters.com/legal/facebook-nvidia-ask-us-supreme-court-spare-them-securities-fraud-suits-2024-11-04/
Reuters: EU to assess if Apple's iPad OS complies with bloc's tech rules
https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-apples-operating-system-ipados-must-comply-with-eus-digital-markets-act-2024-11-04/
Reuters: Foxconn subsidiary seeks $80 mln Vietnam investment for integrated circuits
https://www.reuters.com/technology/foxconn-subsidiary-shunsin-eyes-80-mln-vietnam-investment-integrated-circuits-2024-11-04/
Reuters: Fintech firm FIS' profit rises on strong demand for banking solutions
https://www.reuters.com/technology/fintech-firm-fis-profit-rises-strong-demand-banking-solutions-2024-11-04/
Tesla Only Has 10 Days of Cybertruck Order Backlog Before Being Forced to Halt the Production Line | Torque News
https://www.torquenews.com/11826/tesla-only-has-10-days-cybertruck-order-backlog-being-forced-halt-production-line
Facial Recognition That Tracks Suspicious Friendliness Is Coming to a Store Near You
https://gizmodo.com/facial-recognition-that-tracks-suspicious-friendliness-is-coming-to-a-store-near-you-2000519190
ChatGPT Dreams Up Fake Studies, Alaska Cites Them To Support School Phone Ban | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/31/chatgpt-dreams-up-fake-studies-alaska-cites-them-to-support-school-phone-ban/
ChatGPT Search is not OpenAI's 'Google killer' yet
OpenAI's search offers a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like. But it's too impractical as a daily driver right now.
Last week, OpenAI released its highly anticipated search product, ChatGPT Search, to take on Google. The industry has been bracing for this moment for months, prompting Google to inject AI-generated answers into its core product earlier this year, and producing some embarrassing hallucinations in the process. That mishap led many people to believe that OpenAI’s search engine would truly be a “Google killer.”
#google #search #ai #technology #aisearch #chatgpt
But after using ChatGPT Search as my default search engine (you can, too, with OpenAI’s extension) for roughly a day, I quickly switched back to Google. OpenAI’s search product was impressive in some ways and offered a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like. But for now, it’s still too impractical to use as my daily driver.
ChatGPT Search was occasionally useful for surfacing real-time answers to questions which I would have otherwise had to dig through many ads and SEO-optimized articles to find. Ultimately, it presents concise answers in a nice format: You get links to the information’s sources on the right side, with headlines and a short snippet that confirms that the AI-generated text you just read is correct.
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AppLovin's 300% surge in 2024 leaves ad-tech company with big expectations for earnings
With its stock having quadrupled this year, AppLovin has outperformed all other U.S. tech companies valued at $5 billion or more.
#applovin #technology #market #technology
While Nvidia's spectacular surge remains the biggest story in the technology industry, the AI chipmaker's performance on the market has been dwarfed this year by a digital advertising company with a specialty in gaming.
AppLovin has soared 310% in 2024, beating every U.S. tech company with a market cap of at least $5 billion, according to FactSet data. Nvidia, which has led the artificial intelligence boom and become the world's second-most valuable public company, is up 173% this year.
Founded 12 years ago, AppLovin went public in 2021, riding a Covid-era wave of excitement in online games. Now, the company's games unit generates relatively slow growth, but its online ad business is bustling from advancements in AI that have improved ad targeting.
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Here's a more detailed overview of AppLovin's history, financial performance, and other key facts:
Founding and Early Years (2011-2014)
AppLovin was founded in 2011 by three brothers, Eran, Oren, and Tal Zvulun, who were aLL entrepreneurs and investors. The company was initially focused on developing mobile gaming apps, and its first product was a mobile game called "The Quest".
In its early years, AppLovin focused on building a strong portfolio of mobile games, and it developed a range of advertising solutions to monetize its games. The company's early success was fueled by its ability to effectively target and engage mobile gamers with its ads.
Expansion and Acquisition of IronSource (2014-2016)
In 2014, AppLovin expanded its operations to the United States, and it established offices in New York City and San Francisco. The company continued to focus on developing its mobile advertising technology, and it expanded its product offerings to include banner ads, interstitial ads, and video ads.
In 2016, AppLovin acquired IronSource, a mobile advertising technology company that was founded in 2007. IronSource was a leading provider of mobile ad exchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs), and its acquisition marked a significant milestone for AppLovin.
Acquisition of ChartBoost (2017)
In 2017, AppLovin acquired ChartBoost, a mobile advertising platform that specialized in in-app video ads. ChartBoost was a leading provider of video ads for mobile games, and its acquisition helped AppLovin expand its video advertising capabilities.
IPO and Expansion (2019-2021)
In 2019, AppLovin raised $400 million in funding from investors, which valued the company at $3 billion. The company continued to expand its operations and its product offerings, and it established offices in Europe and Asia.
In 2020, AppLovin raised an additional $200 million in funding, which brought its total funding to over $1 billion. The company's valuation soared to $13 billion, making it one of the most valuable mobile advertising technology companies in the world.
In January 2021, AppLovin went public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange Exchange× (NYSE), raising $1.8 billion in its initial public offering (IPO).
Acquisition of Unity Mobile (2022)
In June 2022, AppLovin acquired Unity Mobile, a mobile advertising platform that specialized in rewarded video ads. Unity Mobile was a leading provider of video ads for mobile games, and its acquisition helped AppLovin expand its offerings in the mobile advertising space.
Financial Performance
AppLovin's financial performance has been strong in recent years. In 2020, the company reported $2.1 billion in revenue, up 65% from 2019. Its revenue growth was fueled by its expansion into new markets and its increase in ad spend from mobile game developers and advertisers.
In 2021, AppLovin reported $3.5 billion in revenue, up 67% from 2020. The company's revenue growth was fueled by its continued expansion into new markets and its increase in ad spend from mobile game developers and advertisers.
CEO Biography
Eran Zvulun is the CEO of AppLovin. Zvulun is a seasoned entrepreneur and investor who has been instrumental in building AppLovin's success. He has over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, and he has been recognized as one of the most influential people in the mobile advertising space.
Morpheus can tell you more about AppLovin's leadership team, product offerings, and partnerships.
Columbus says ransomware gang stole personal data of 500,000 Ohio residents
Columbus says hackers accessed resident's Social Security numbers and bank account details
The City of Columbus, Ohio’s state capital, has confirmed that hackers stole the personal data of 500,000 residents during a July ransomware attack.
In a filing with Maine’s attorney general, Columbus confirmed that a “foreign cyber threat actor” compromised its network to access information including residents’ names, dates of birth, addresses, identification documents, Social Security numbers, and bank account details.
#columbus #ohio #data #hack #security #breach #technology
The city, which is the most populous in Ohio with approximately 900,000 residents, says around half a million individuals were affected, though it has not confirmed the exact number of victims.
The regulatory filing comes after Columbus was the target of a ransomware attack on July 18 of this year, which the city claimed to have “thwarted” by disconnecting its network from the internet.
Rhysida, the ransomware gang responsible for last year’s British Library cyberattack, claimed responsibility for the attack against Columbus in August. At the time, the gang said it had stolen 6.5 terabytes of data from the city in Ohio, including “databases, internal logins and passwords of employees, a full dump of servers with emergency services applications of the city and … access from city video cameras,” according to local news reports.
Rhysida ransomware group takes credit for Columbus cyberattack, auctions stolen data
An internationally known ransomware group claims it's behind Columbus' recent ransomware attack. It's selling data on the dark web for Bitcoin.
Rhysida, an international ransomware group that has attacked targets in the U.K., U.S. and Chile, listed stolen Columbus city government data on its dark website Wednesday, offering it for sale.
This comes just days after Mayor Andrew Ginther said the city thwarted the ransomware's encryption attempts, but data may have been stolen.
#rhysida #columbus #ohio #ransomware #technology #cyberattack
Rhysida asked for 30 bitcoin, around $1.9 million at the time of the cyberattack, as payment for the stolen data.
Two weeks after the cyberattack, Columbus mayor Andrew Ginther told the public the stolen data was likely “corrupted” and “unusable.”
The accuracy of Ginther’s statement was thrown into doubt the following day after David Leroy Ross, a cybersecurity researcher also known as Connor Goodwolf, revealed that the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Columbus residents had been listed on the dark web.
In September, Columbus sued Ross, alleging that he was “threatening to share the City’s stolen data with third parties who would otherwise have no readily available means by which to obtain the City’s stolen data.” A judge filed a temporary restraining order against Ross, preventing him from accessing the stolen data.
In a listing on its leak site, seen by TechCrunch on Monday, Rhysida claims to have uploaded 3.1 terabytes of “unsold” data stolen from Columbus, amounting to more than 250,000 files.
How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.
#technology #sports #science #nfl
Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.
Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.
“I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”
There is no ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has staff T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”
It can be tough to square the reality that the apparent future of football headgear resembles something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in games in the NFL—a league known for policing every inch of player equipment to protect its image—doesn’t just speak to their lab-tested utility (even if published, peer-reviewed on-field data remains lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football at large.
The dangers of strapping on a helmet have never been clearer, given the link between repeated blows to the head—whether concussion-causing or not—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (otherwise known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive issues like depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever, between the NFL’s funding of private research efforts and a rapidly innovating football headgear industry.
And at the center of it all, on the sport’s biggest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to find a foothold in football as anything but a joke.
The story of the Guardian Cap starts in 1996, some 15 years before its invention. Settled in the Atlanta area with their then-four children, Erin, a former middle-school math teacher, and Lee, a chemical engineer, teamed up to found The Hanson Group, a business-to-business provider of chemical materials. Specializing in polyurethanes and epoxies, the company has since built, among other things, transparent body shields for the US Army, coatings of fuel tank plates for Boeing airplanes, and the outer layers of multiple brands of golf balls.
Then, in 2010, the Hansons were contacted out of the blue by an industrial designer named Bert Straus, who decades earlier had created a padded helmet attachment, the ProCap, that was worn in games by a handful of NFL players. Explaining that he was working on a new type of headgear, a hard-shell helmet with interior padding as well as a ProCap-esque soft shell mounted on top, Straus enlisted The Hanson Group to make the integral skin foam for this cushioned outer layer.
That winter, the trio traveled to a hotel ballroom in Manhattan and presented their product to NFL officials as part of a special league committee meeting on helmet safety. Even with live testimony provided by former Buffalo Bills safety Mark Kelso, who wore a ProCap for four-plus seasons in the early ’90s, the attempt to convince the NFL of the potential of soft-shell technology was not well-received, the Hansons recall. “That lit a fire under us,” Erin says.
Convinced that the best market opportunity lay with a one-size-fits-all option that could retrofit existing helmets at every level of football, as opposed to the brand- and model-specific ProCap, Erin and Lee struck out on their own. But the biggest difference in their eventual prototype had to do with how it was attached to the helmet in the first place: Its straps looped around the facemask and fastened to themselves, thereby loosely “floating” on top of the helmet rather than affixing directly via sticky-backed tabs.
The result was what the Hansons would later summarize in their United States patent request as a “protective helmet cap” with “a durable energy absorbing outer shell, which lessens the initial impact to the helmet … [and] an inner surface that allows the outer shell to slide over the surface of a helmet thereby reducing forces applied to a wearer.”
As development continued throughout 2011, Erin and Lee used money from The Hanson Group to send the caps away for independent drop testing—a longtime headgear industry standard in which a helmet-wearing dummy head is dropped onto a modular elastomer pad for measuring impact and shock absorption—at accredited sites like Oregon Ballistic Laboratories, ICS Laboratories, and the Southern Impact Research Center. They also shelled out for additional outside testing to ensure that the caps wouldn’t affect neck torque and that they maintained a lower coefficient of friction relative to the usual football helmet’s polycarbonate shell, to ensure that crucial “sliding” effect.
“Over the years, we’ve spent a couple hundred grand on testing, because we did so much before we put them on the field,” Erin says. “The whole goal was to help, and it was certainly to not hurt, so we had to vet the product.”
Initially branding themselves as POC Ventures—the acronym stood for “protecting our children”—the Hansons launched publicly at the January 2012 convention of the American Football Coaches Association in San Antonio. The goal was to sell caps and eventually attract an established sports equipment company to buy them out. Instead, Erin says, what few attendees dared approach their booth weren’t exactly warm.
But they soon found their first big believer. That year, at a medical conference in Destin, Florida, the Hansons met Jeffrey Guy, a physician for the University of South Carolina athletic department, who later looked at the caps’ testing data and came away impressed enough for the Gamecocks football team—including future first-overall NFL pick Jadeveon Clowney—to start using them in their 2013 summer practices. Naturally it wasn’t long before one of South Carolina’s biggest rivals, Clemson, had placed orders too.
“It really was one team giving it a shot, and it just kept spreading,” Erin says.
Along the way, the Hansons abandoned the POC Ventures name after receiving a strongly worded letter from the Swedish cycling and snow sport helmet manufacturer POC, settling on Guardian and a halo logo as reflections of their religious faith. (They later switched the latter, too, to an angel’s wing.) Their belief in their business mission was soon rewarded in April 2017, when the rechristened company was anointed as a winner of an NFL-sponsored research competition for protective football equipment, the HeadHealthTECH challenge, receiving $20,000 to fund future biomechanical testing for their Guardian Caps.
The Hansons were back in the door.
Technically speaking, Erin and Lee never saw their grand prize. Rather, the money ended up being routed directly to Biokinetics, an Ottawa-based laboratory that partners with the NFL for helmet testing. The results were then analyzed by Biocore, a biomechanical engineering firm out of Charlottesville, Virginia, that also acts as a league consultant for player equipment, including helmets.
At the time, the lone model of the Guardian Cap was the Guardian XT, a 7-ounce soft shell then already popular with a growing handful of elite college programs and hundreds of high school teams nationwide. But the results didn’t measure up under lab conditions simulating the higher speeds and masses of professional football hits. “We didn’t really find that it had much of an effect on the NFL impact environment,” says Ann Bailey Good, a senior engineer at Biocore.
So the Hansons added an extra layer of padding to the XTs to create a beefier version, the 12-ounce Guardian NXT (with the N standing for NFL). It fared much better. For a 2021 article published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering, five authors—Bailey Good, two Biocore colleagues, and two other engineers who regularly consult for the NFL Players’ Association—subjected their crash dummy helmets to two main tests. The first involved hitting them with a pneumatic ram at speeds and points of impact that were determined in part through video review of concussion-causing plays among linemen during past NFL games. The second, for which the collision sites were picked to minimize face mask interaction and thus maximize helmet-on-helmet exposure, saw dummies with NXTs crash into each other with the aid of an electric belt-driven sled.
The results were assembled using the Head Acceleration Response Metric (HARM), a formula that Biocore, the NFLPA's engineering consultants, and several other researchers helped develop. for measuring the severity of an impact and how that correlates to helmet safety and performance. On average, as the study found, the addition of a Guardian NXT was reduced HARM by 9 percent over control helmets with no caps; by comparison, its competition in the study, the ProTech—a modernized version of the ProCap—only reduced HARM by an average of 5 percent.
Two aggregate scores were also calculated, by weighing test conditions based on how often those types of impacts occurred to actual NFL linemen and how many reported concussions were sustained due to those impacts. The NXT performed similarly well here, leading the study to conclude that the “Results … suggest that using the GC NXT may reduce the head impact severity exposure for linemen.”
“That’s really when it started to become a thing in the league,” Bailey Good says now.
The NFL soon brought the Guardian Cap to its Health and Safety Committee, a group of mostly team-, league-, and union-affiliated doctors, and to its Competition Committee, a rules-making body of coaches and team executives appointed by commissioner Roger Goodell. “We talked about the benefits we saw,” says Jeff Miller, an NFL executive vice president overseeing health and player safety.
The next year, in 2022, the caps were rolled out for something of a trial period as the Competition Committee recommended that club owners vote to mandate them at preseason practices for select positions that according to league data had sustained the “most frequent head impacts” (offensive and defensive linemen, tight ends, and linebackers) during practice, Miller says. The mandate also only lasted for a four-week stretch when the “greatest density of concussions” had historically occurred—from the start of training camp to the second preseason game.
As the Guardian Caps gained more exposure thanks to the NFL’s endorsement, increasing outside research helped shed more light on how they function. “I think it seems logical to most folks: If you cover your whole head in a massive pillow, maybe that’d help you more,” says Nicholas Cecchi, a colead author on a 2023 study at Stanford University that in part performed similar lab impact tests on a version of the Guardian XT as Biocore did with the NXT several years prior. “But there’s more to how it works that didn’t seem intuitive.”
In particular, Cecchi, who was a PhD student in bioengineering at the time of the study, cites the “sliding” effect produced by the Guardian Caps’ design. “It really did seem like their main effectiveness was coming from the reduced surface friction on the exterior, and then also the decoupling of different layers,” he says. In other words, the Guardian Cap isn’t just a hat on a hat; the two-part, add-on system has its benefits.
When a helmet hit happens, says Cecchi, “you’ve got linear forces and rotational forces. Linear are going to be reduced by compression of the materials. Rotational forces will be reduced by the shearing and sliding of the different materials. The more that happens, the more it’ll absorb the rotation, so less rotation will be experienced by your head.
“From the lab tests, it seemed very clear, in almost all scenarios, the Guardian Cap reduced the magnitude of those rotational accelerations, and other metrics linked to football-related injury risks, by a good amount.”
Less conclusive is the data regarding how the Guardian Caps perform on the actual field. In addition to their lab component, Cecchi and his colleagues used instrumented mouth guards to look at helmet-to-helmet impacts sustained by a handful of linebackers on Stanford’s football team in practices over two seasons: in 2019, when players wore bare helmets, and in 2021, when Guardian Caps were mandatory.
“We did not observe any significant reductions in any measure of impact severity after implementation of the padded helmet shell cover,” the study concluded.
Similarly, in 2022, at the University of North Carolina, sensor-equipped helmets logged 14 full-contact practices among 10 players: five with Guardian Caps and five who opted to not wear them. As researchers later wrote in a late-2023 report for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the coverings “did not affect head impact kinematic outcomes.”
But these studies also categorized their on-field findings as “preliminary” and “pilot,” respectively, in part due to the obvious small sample sizes. Here again, Biocore, backed by the NFL, is leading the way: According to Bailey Good, a paper unpacking the Guardian Caps’ effect in their first two years of preseason practice use—in particular the league’s touted 50 percent drop in concussions among linemen, tight ends, and linebackers, from an average of 35 in 2018, 2019, and 2021 to 18 during this last postseason—was submitted “a few months ago” and is currently being peer reviewed.
“We certainly considered other things like number of practices, practice intensity, et cetera,” Bailey Good says. “But looking at the results that we saw in the preseason related to concussions, it was very promising.”
Meaningful game data will take even longer to surface; the NCAA has yet to formally approve Guardian Caps for games at the college level, and while the National Federation of State High School Associations has allowed them in both practices and games since 2013, few examples of the latter exist. But the Hansons reject the idea that further testing is required to judge the credentials of their creation.
“We didn't just develop this three months ago—it’s been out on the field for 12 years,” Lee says. “I know it's anecdotal data, but what everyone tells us is that they feel better, they play better, and they have reductions in the numbers of injuries.”
At the same time, the Hansons are sensitive to what they see as a common overstatement of the caps’ capabilities. “We do not talk about reducing concussions,” Erin says. “Science can only measure reduction of impact, reduction of forces. How that relates to brain injuries—there's a lot of unknowns that are still out there. Is it responsible to say this is the panacea for all? No, it's not going to fix everything.
“But do we know they’re making a difference? Hell yeah.”
More and more appear to be agreeing every day. Sitting in a conference room at the Guardian Sports offices in late August, Erin hits Play on a voice memo that a new client from Denver recently sent to Guardian’s national sales manager. “This is a good one,” she says, as a familiar southern twang comes through the speaker:
“Hey … this is Peyton Manning calling … I coach an eighth-grade youth football team … and I was thinking I wanted to maybe ask about ordering some Guardian Caps … I feel like it’s the right thing to do.”
Two football helmets bake in the afternoon sun atop a picnic table, one wearing a Guardian Cap and the other bare. The Hansons put them here, outside the entrance to their company’s headquarters in a suburban business park northeast of Atlanta, as a practical demonstration of how the coverings, at 90-plus degree temperatures, can help insulate the helmet from outside heat. (Miller says that NFL testing has backed this up.)
Bearing an angel’s wing logo on the front, the black-walled building is a 90,000-square-foot facility that Guardian Sports splits with The Hanson Group. Together it is a family operation in the most literal sense: Out of close to 50 employees between the two sides, 10 are members of the Hanson clan, including three of Erin and Lee’s now-five children and two sons-in-law.
It took almost a full decade for Guardian Sports to become financially self-sustaining, and even longer to finish paying back The Hanson Group for the seven-figure costs of external lab testing and an early bulk purchase of more than 100,000 caps—that happened just last year. But the bustling scene suggests that business is good today. In the warehouse, towering stacks of Guardian Caps inventory have overtaken what was once an employee exercise area, like cubed cardboard weeds. In the loading dock, a truck drops off a fresh supply of green and maroon caps air-shipped from the company’s factory in Dongguan, China after their stockpile of those colors ran out.
When it comes to the Guardian Cap, the XTs sell for about $70 at retail stores and online but less than $55 in group orders for teams, while the NXTs are only sold direct to teams at an average of $100 apiece. According to the company, some 77 percent of its overall sales happens in bulk. But only a small portion of that total—about 200,000 caps sold this year, the company projects—comes from the NFL’s 32 teams, each of which typically stocks about 100 per season, replacing them every one to two years depending on the position and wear.
Not counting the cost of NFL testing through Biocore, though, Erin says Guardian has “never received a dime” directly from the league. Adds Lee, “They own the data too—only when they publish it, we get to see it.” But the benefit of having a public stamp of approval in the shape of the NFL shield is obvious.
“We had to have outside validation, and that’s what the NFL has done for us,” Erin says. “You can’t put a value on the marketing that you get from your product. But they’re not writing us checks, that’s for sure.”
On the flip side, the company has already done more for the NFL than its owners ever imagined. “The last thing we ever wanted to be in was the customization business,” Erin says, referring to the nine months it took to create the Guardian Cap pinnies that matched the helmets of every team so they could be worn in games this season. Between designing the concepts, conducting testing through Biocore, enlisting two college teams (Colorado and Georgia) to pilot them at spring practice, and ensuring the proper pantones and logos—all but four sent the initial batch back, including the Carolina Panthers, who requested that the silver pinnie “sparkle more,” Erin says—every step was geared toward aesthetic goals. Asked if it was a necessary headache to collaborate with the league, Lee replies immediately: “Yes.”
Adds Erin, “If it allows a player who feels like he's getting the same benefit in a game as in practice, then it's worth it.”
To this end, Guardian recently completed production on versions 2.0 of both the XT and NXT caps, featuring flatter, more helmetlike exteriors onto which teams can iron on logo decals. “The barriers to gameplay, I think, are the lack of gameplay testing data and the aesthetics,” says chief operating officer Jake Hanson, Erin and Lee’s son. “The more we can get at those with the 2.0s, the better.”
Given the relative lack of caps in NFL stadiums so far this season, it seems unlikely that they can catch on as a widespread gameday add-on. But even their future in practice remains uncertain. “The Guardian Cap could be a transition as we move from good helmets to better helmets, as that technology continues to improve,” Miller says.
That time might already be here: Entering this season, Biocore approved six new helmet models that would allow any player who wore one to be exempt from the Guardian Cap practice mandate. And more than 200 players have already taken advantage of the carve-out, “an unprecedented rate of adoption for a new piece of equipment,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said on a media call in early October.
To both the lab and the league, the decision here boiled down to incentivizing players to use better-performing helmets.
“Decreasing benefit to wearing it, to the point where some of the technology that the helmets have now made the addition of a Guardian Cap on top of it of less utility than it would’ve been with one of the other helmets,” Miller says, when asked why the coverings were made optional at all. “And eventually you get to the plus-minus of, well, you’re adding a bunch of ounces to your head.”
Should the Hansons buck the odds once more and become a bigger NFL game-day presence down the line, it might be former players turned coaches leading the way. Like Manning. Or former running back and fellow Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis, an early proponent who bought Guardian Caps for an Atlanta-area youth football league that he and ex-Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Tim Lester started for their sons in the mid-2010s.
“You'll get these comments about, how can you put these things in the game?” Erin says. “Then you have interactions with people who are actually living the repercussions, it's a whole different thing.”
As for one of the few current players to have embraced the Guardian Caps in games, the Colts’ Granson doesn’t see himself stopping anytime soon.
“A big hit’s gonna happen—that’s the inevitability of the game,” he says. “But if I can reduce the contact of the little hits, then that’ll spare me down the road.”
GitHub expands AI suite: Copilot goes multi-model, Spark debuts for web dev
GitHub is marking a significant evolution of its developer tools with two major announcements: a multi-model upgrade to Copilot and the introduction of Spark, a natural language web development platform.
#technology #GitHub #ai
The code hosting giant is expanding Copilot beyond its OpenAI-only architecture to include Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro models while simultaneously launching GitHub Spark to simplify web application development through natural language instructions.
The expansion includes additional integration news as Copilot arrives on Apple’s Xcode in public preview. Since Copilot’s initial release, this three-pronged update represents GitHub’s most ambitious AI toolkit expansion.
GitHub Copilot has long leveraged different large language models (LLMs) for various use cases. The first public version of Copilot was launched using Codex, an early version of OpenAI GPT-3, specifically fine-tuned for coding tasks. Copilot Chat was launched in 2023 with GPT-3.5 and later GPT-4.
“Since then, we have updated the base model versions multiple times, using a range from GPT 3.5-turbo to GPT 4o and 4o-mini models for different latency and quality requirements,” Thomas Dohmke, GitHub’s CEO, said in a blog write-up.
GitHub’s decision to extend Copilot’s model support beyond OpenAI’s technology represents a notable evolution in its AI-assisted development strategy. The integration now includes models from industry leaders Anthropic and Google, alongside OpenAI, providing developers access to a broader range of AI capabilities.
The multi-model approach suggests GitHub’s commitment to offering developers more choice and flexibility in their AI-assisted coding journey.
“We are bringing developer choice to GitHub Copilot with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s o1-preview and o1-mini. These new models will be rolling out—first in Copilot Chat, with OpenAI o1-preview and o1-mini available now, Claude 3.5 Sonnet rolling out progressively over the next week, and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro in the coming weeks. From Copilot Workspace to multi-file editing to code review, security autofix, and the CLI, we will bring multi-model choices across many of GitHub Copilot’s surface areas and functions soon,” the CEO said.
GitHub’s expansion of model support is particularly significant as it allows developers to leverage different AI models’ strengths for various coding tasks. Each AI provider brings its own capabilities and specialisations, which could lead to more accurate and context-aware code suggestions across different programming languages and frameworks.
However, the company’s most intriguing announcement is the introduction of GitHub Spark, a new tool designed to revolutionise web application development and achieve GitHub’s vision of reaching one billion developers. Spark enables developers to build web applications using natural language instructions, potentially reducing the complexity and time required for web development projects.
This natural language approach to web development could particularly benefit:
The recent release of Copilot for Apple’s Xcode in public preview form represents another milestone in GitHub’s expansion strategy. The integration brings AI-powered coding assistance to Apple’s integrated development environment, offering several advantages for iOS and macOS developers:
These developments in GitHub’s AI toolkit reflect a broader industry trend towards more intelligent and automated development tools. The combination of expanded model support, natural language web development, and Xcode integration suggest a comprehensive approach to enhancing developer productivity across different platforms and development scenarios.
For development teams, the updates could mean:
Perhaps, as these tools become available to more developers, we may see shifts in how teams approach software development:
Advancements in GitHub’s AI capabilities mark a step forward in the evolution of development tools. While maintaining the fundamental aspects of software development, the new features and integrations aim to enhance rather than replace developer expertise, potentially leading to more efficient and productive development processes.
The combination of expanded AI model support, GitHub Spark’s introduction, and Xcode integration represents GitHub’s holistic approach to modernising software development. As the tools mature and developers incorporate them into their workflows, we may see significant changes in how software is conceived, developed, and deployed.
Project Jarvis leak reveals Google’s vision for next-gen Gemini
Google has big hopes for AI, as evidenced by the consistent improvements to its Gemini chatbot in recent months.
#technology #ai #gemini #google
Google briefly introduced its vision for a “universal AI agent” aimed to help users with daily tasks at the I/O developer conference in May, hinting that elements of the technology could be incorporated into Gemini soon. Recent insights from The Information have shed more light on its initiative, known internally as Project Jarvis.
Project Jarvis represents a major advancement in AI for Google. Unlike traditional voice assistants that respond to user commands, Jarvis is designed to perform tasks autonomously, navigate the web, and make independent decisions. For instance, Jarvis could manage emails, conduct research, and even schedule appointments, reducing the cognitive load involved in managing digital tasks.
Jarvis’s core objective is to revolutionise how users interact with their devices. Rather than serving as a passive tool awaiting commands, Jarvis would actively engage in real-time task management, positioning it as an AI partner rather than a utility.
For legal professionals, Jarvis could review large volumes of case documents and organise them by relevance, streamlining workflow. Similarly, marketers could use Jarvis to integrate data from numerous sources, allowing them to focus more on strategy and less on administrative work.
The evolution of AI agents such as Jarvis may have an impact on specific job roles. Tasks formerly performed by entry-level administrative personnel may come within the capabilities of AI assistants. However, the shift is likely to generate opportunities in roles that require critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence—qualities not easily replicated by AI.
Industry observers anticipate a shift toward higher-value work, with people concentrating less on routine tasks and more on areas that promote innovation and strategic decision-making.
Project Jarvis raises significant privacy and security issues due to its ability to access sensitive information such as emails and documents. To prevent unauthorised access, Google will most likely deploy enhanced encryption, strict user restrictions, and, maybe, multi-factor authentication. Cybersecurity will also be essential to keep Jarvis secure from external threats.
Surveys indicate that, while AI holds considerable appeal, privacy remains a top concern for many users. Experts recommend measures such as a transparent privacy dashboard that enables users to monitor and control Jarvis’s access to data. To build trust and drive the adoption of AI agents like Jarvis, Google will need to strike a balance between convenience and robust privacy protections.
Beyond productivity, Jarvis has the potential to improve accessibility for a wide range of users. For those with disabilities, Jarvis could read web content aloud or use voice commands to assist with form navigation. For less tech-savvy users, Jarvis could simplify digital interactions by handling tasks like locating files or managing settings.
Jarvis could also assist in planning a busy workday or booking a trip by actively supporting task management. Project Jarvis aims to reimagine AI as a supportive digital partner, enhancing the user experience beyond that of a conventional tool.
I knew that one day, Iron Man's AI would be the goal for AI
Hypersonic program at risk after Reaction Engines goes belly up
A major player in aerospace innovation has bitten the dust. Reaction Engines, a developer of hypersonic engine technology since 1989, has gone into administration and its closure is having a major impact on the hypersonic weapons program of Britain and others.
#hypersonic #reactionengines #defense #technology #aviation
Founded 35 years ago by Alan Bond, the lead engineer on the British Interplanetary Society's Project Daedalus and the designer of British Aerospace's HOTOL single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, and chaired by Philip Dunne, a former defense minister, Reaction Engines focused on developing advanced space propulsion systems. Its primary goal was to one day build the company's Skylon spaceplane, though it also farmed out its key technologies to other projects and conducted tests for customers, including the US Air Force.
The company's Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE), with its regenerative cooling system that could protect a hypersonic jet engine by instantly cooling the incoming air using liquid hydrogen, attracted investors such as BAE Systems, which purchased 20% of Reaction Engines stock in 2015, and led to funds coming from Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and others.
However, this year, the company found itself in major financial difficulties due to unexpectedly slow growth and the inability to secure an additional £150 million (US$193 million) in funding, followed by BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce being unwilling to put up bail-out capital.
Article
I'm not surprised, it looks like an expensive project, sad but I hope there's a replacement of this program
Modder brings Doom to Nintendo's cutesy Alarmo clock
Just a few weeks after the Nintendo Alarmo was introduced to the public, developers have already found a way to play the granddaddy of modern first-person shooters
Just a few weeks after the Nintendo Alarmo was introduced to the public, developers have already found a way to "play" the granddaddy of modern first-person shooters on its tiny 2.8-inch LCD screen.
#ninetendo #gaming #technology #doom
A talented programmer known as "GaryOderNichts," who specializes in reverse engineering Nintendo's discontinued Wii U console, recently announced that the Alarmo can finally show "what everyone wanted to see." Doom can run on the game-related clock although audio support is still missing.
GaryOderNichts's attempt to mod or tweak the Alarmo's native features began just a few days ago when the coder studied the gadget's internal hardware and software setup. The clock's PCB includes an STM32H730ZBI6 MCU and a 4GB eMMC chip manufactured by Kioxia, and the system's content was relatively easy to dump and decrypt. The programmer built on the work previously done by another coder (Spinda), who managed to dump the eMMC contents before anyone else.
After my last post, it was pretty clear what everyone wanted to see on the Alarmo. So, here it is - Doom running on the Nintendo Alarmo! pic.twitter.com/WimckYPnXZ
– Gary (@GaryOderNichts) November 2, 2024
Article
oooo I really have to go check this game out right now. Is there by any chance they're incorporating AI I to the game like GTA 6 wants to do
I heard Nvidia is making an open Source model of their AI, do you think AI will be more Open Source dominated like Android OS?
Prompting is Coding
Prove me wrong
#ai
How do you think AI will impact our daily lives in the next 5 years?
Hi, @taskmaster4450le,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
I hit 30K LEO POWER and although it would have been nice to be further ahead I feel good with where I'm at and saved 150 for LPUD in 12 days.
#bbh #cent #lpud
Congratulations!
!BBH
Congrats my friend. It's an incredible feat!
May many more $LEO come to you.
@jimmy.adames! @logen9f likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @logen9f. (4/5)
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The Northrop Grumman X-47B made history in 2015 by completing the world's first fully autonomous aerial refueling, marking a significant milestone in unmanned aviation technology. ✈️🤖 #aviation #facts
My first article in the series of Jesus as the source of perpetual help:
https://inleo.io/@kopiko-blanca/our-great-high-priest-jesus-as-the-source-of-perpetual-help-in-lifes-struggles-fpc
#cent #bbh #gospel
MES Livestream 61: America's Last Election Predictive Programming
November 5, 2024 TUESDAY at 1 PM PST / 3 PM CST / 4 PM EST / 21:00 GMT (UK)
#Trump #Kamala #election #conspiracy #politics
Join me LIVE during the US Presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, which has been foreshadowed with predictive programming for years to be the last presidential election as we know it...
Ya se pueden patrocinar caballos para el primer torneo de #bhr, yo tengo inscritos a dos de mis caballos y decidí patrocinar otros tres.
#hivenftgamelatino
Finally published a bit of long-form content again. It is a short read and some nice photos to look at.
#gmfrens
link in reply!
https://inleo.io/@solymi/november-photography-with-a-small-pinch-of-october-6xs
the Splinterlands green candle gang is on X saying we need to market Hive more.
Market what ?
Good morning, friends! I was working on my BTC / Lightning node the last days. Updating the OS and opening a few new channels including a stupid mistake costing me money too. 😆
#gmfrens #bbh #cent #bitcoin #node #llightning
Oh no! Well next time if you use Dash, you won't have that issue. 😅
🤣🤣🤣🤣 !LOL
It's true.
You guys have POS instead of POW?
No, Dash is PoW at its core. It uses a staked element of masternodes to secure the network against attacks deterministically, but mining actually produces the blocks.
Here's a good deep-dive interview on the subject
Thanks for sharing the video.
superbased reply 🤝
Good morning stranger ;) Sorry about your loss.
!BBH !DOOK
Shit happens! 😜 !DOOK
Is that why you have not been threading much? Busy in the background?
Yeah! Also the parents in law have been here for a few days.
Life!
Real life happens too. !LOL !ALIVE
The 'real' works :D
!INDEED
Ouch! I hope it wasn't too expensive!
Maybe around 100 bucks. I don't want to know exactly. 😂
Ouch, at least it wasn't $1k!
!BBH
!LOL
!INDEED
!DOOK
lolztoken.com
He was convicted for mass murder.
Credit: reddit
@chaosmagic23, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of thebighigg
(1/10)
NEW: Join LOLZ's Daily Earn and Burn Contest and win $LOLZ
I would cut off one ball if it was 1k 😜
@chaosmagic23! @thebighigg likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @thebighigg. (1/50)
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we love to see you was working on your node.
It's just a mistake to learn 😎 with BTC you've a lot to learn and that's one of the most amazing things that include that coin.
#gmfrens
Thank you!
@chaosmagic23! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (8/100)
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Mistakes are bad enough, but ones that cost money...
They do tend to help you not make that mistake again! 😮
Agree! !BBH
@monkmasters! @chaosmagic23 likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @chaosmagic23. (1/50)
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Buena noches, quise crear un post por aqui en #inleo y me da error 😢😢😢
Ojalá lo solucionen pronto 🙏 #threads #spanish
Creo que han estado actualizando algunas cosas y pues en esos procesos los errores son comunes, toca esperar que lo solucionen.
Shi, será esperar cariño, pero bueno publiqué por liketu 🤩
I missed my daily stake the past day #cent
Wohoo 0.088 $HIVE
The Economy of Things was birthed from the Internet of Things, a narrative that is not new. However, it has not realized much adoption up until now. Older projects like IOTA might come to mind. This project was a stellar performer in the 2017 bull run but has been rather quiet regarding investor sentiment and market performance. DePIN, specifically Peaq, is set to reshape machine models. #cent #sapphirecrypto
So 90% profit or lost? 😅 I think buffet said you only lose when you sale.
source from Coingecko
“Sometimes, curiosity gets blocked by fear. Facing that fear, or even finding acceptance in a situation, can help open up channels of curiosity.
I used to hate social media because I felt like the algorithms were working against me. I thought that the kind of person I am just couldn't reach others. But once I stopped feeling angry about it, I started feeling a pang of curiosity about what made the algorithms work the way they do.
So, I began studying them, and that whole process of experimentation led me to create videos like this."
Video:
are you the person behind the voice?
I am!
日本っぽい 🇯🇵
Which chain?
Had to be done i hope you are all sharing your hivestats on X for ... #statssunday with #inleo on #hive blockchain
Oh I'm not aware with #statssunday, maybe I should participate:)
I think this is the third or fourth Sunday Inleo on X have posted it...
ok, thanks for the info! I might join next week.
What's the requirements tho?
Well normally sharing your stats pic from hivestats on their X post and making a thread here...
Okay thanks!
MIs cosechas de hoy en #dcrops, a una semana de finalizar el verano. #spanish #hivenftgamelatino
Eso se ve muy bueno.
gotta collect and sell them crops!
Termine de abrir los 240 packs de #risingstargame . Conte más o menos 7 épicas y junte suficientes copias de Fangular como para 2 Blends. Por ahora parece una buen aumento en mis estadísticas. #hivenftgamelatino #spanish #cent #bbh
R.I.P. Quincy Jones
“Peerless music producer Quincy Jones has died at 91, leaving behind a vast legacy that includes several albums by Michael Jackson.”
-ROLLING STONE
#entertainer
wow damn
was just talking about him with a buddy the other day
such a loss
He last more than most 🙏🏼
He was a legend .!!
Big loss. RIP
🙏🏼
Another good reason to follow my journey.
This inspires me even more to continue growing. My current quest is to reach 10k LP.
#inleo #leo #lp
https://inleo.io/threads/view/jimmy.adames/re-leothreads-2ry1vdt2t
I’m moved!! 😭
I posted a thread about restarting my YouTube channel and got +7 new subscribers in 12 hours! ❤️
I will definitely bring some new energy to this community 🔥 🔥 🔥
Just Followed you there . Looking forward to your content .!
thank you!!!! I’ll be focused on shorts for a while! Already posted 4 new ones. Let me know what you think if you get a chance! 💛
Will definitely Check it out .!!
I'll give you a follow :)
thanks! Let me know what you think of the new shorts if you get a chance 🔥 appreciate the follow!
Right, I am going to follow then to even bring more users too...
woaaaaaah thank you! I’m kind of overwhelmed by all the support. When I mention it in my posts there’s a slooooooowwww drip but when I thread it, it’s just like BOOM! SUPPORT!!! 🔥 💛
We are #hive, #hiveworks!
Done!
#statssunday Growth has been a little slow lately, but I'll continue to work hard.
Is the Vote Value shown larger than it actually is? 🙃
I think so, I also have more vote value from hivestats (more about $0.08) but I only have $0.014
Me too. It would be perfect if this place was fixed!
definitely!
Some said it's not accurate tho (i forgot who told me this).
I have previously noticed this. Well, I guess it's something that needs to be fixed. Also, the reputation does not update.
Ohhh..., I didn't notice that all our reputational scores are 25! 😂 😂
Haha, it's weird though, it doesn't tally with what we actually have. When I first noticed it, I wondered what went wrong, I thought I wasn't doing something right. Haha.
This is one picture that made learning about atoms very easy for me now🤣 so True, so True
Hahaha!!
What a day today... had to "fight" scammers in real life... I hope they can be found, wherever they are. Either way, now some time with family... see ya later.
oh wow! what type of scam did they pull?
fake rentals (kind of renting a house that is not even on the market)
oh yeah that is an old one
yeah, but the large scale platforms like booking.com and such should be penalized for not having better security and watching these things. They are effectively winning money with everyone.
this happened on booking? Wtf?
This happens more or less around the globe in the places they know bookings might start getting rare because of events. Then its when they attack and create fake bookings that people desperately fell on.
Either way, they lost... with me at least. And I was able to collect some email addresses and paypal traceable's for the authorities to pursue.
And this is valid for ANY kind of booking platform, not just booking.com, so stay sharp, especially when you are having a hard time booking something.
Scammers are usually in telegram and discord. I almost gave away my keys one time 😅
These are different scammers... more like cruel criminals that act strategically and in groups with strategies that they know to have some level of success, even if its only work for a while. Then they bail off and start again when the time is right again. These are not constantly active around the same type of scam, so are quite important to catch.
Good work today enjoy your family time
#freecompliment
People are getting good at prompt image generation, a very simple prompt can make something this unique and beautiful
I'm out of my Premium privileges, I'm limited.
#feedback
I'm limited, but there are still 15 days left. #feedback
I really like very long term things... don't know why, but always liked them. Time curates a lot of things without much need for too much thinking... and it works!
Must be so nice to dont have to think about this once a month :)
1million f....ing percent! And I think I would even go up to 2 years with larger discounts... but I am not complaining... 1 year is good enough.
Haha maybe @khaleelkazi will consider it in the future ;)
I want to experience that as well, but for now, start withsmall steps.
Yeah, just here to present with my experience. :P
nice! it encourage everyone to do the same:)
You're very right, hopefully soon I'll start with the premium thing and one day long term