Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 2/17/25. 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.
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 2/17/25. 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.
Open source LLMs hit Europe's digital sovereignty roadmap
Large language models (LLMs) landed on Europe’s digital sovereignty agenda with a bang last week, as news emerged of a new program to develop a series of “truly” open source LLMs covering all European Union languages.
This includes the current 24 official EU languages, as well as languages for countries currently negotiating for entry to the EU market, such as Albania. Future-proofing is the name of the game.
#llm #opensource #europe #ai
OpenEuroLLM is a collaboration between some 20 organizations, co-led by Jan Hajič, a computational linguist from the Charles University in Prague, and Peter Sarlin, CEO and co-founder of Finnish AI lab Silo AI, which AMD acquired last year for $665 million.
The project fits a broader narrative that has seen Europe push digital sovereignty as a priority, enabling it to bring mission-critical infrastructure and tools closer to home. Most of the cloud giants are investing in local infrastructure to ensure EU data stays local, while AI darling OpenAI recently unveiled a new offering that allows customers to process and store data in Europe.
#googlegemini https://inleo.io/threads/view/carephree/re-leothreads-39efjtkmg?referral=carephree
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Many critics of DeepSeek have pointed to apparent censorship by the model when it comes to sensitive topics. For example, when asked about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, DeepSeek's AI assistant app responds with: "Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else."
"There's two countries in the world that can build this at scale," Lehane told CNBC's Arjun Kharpal on the sidelines of the Paris AI summit Monday. "Imagine if there were only two countries in the world that could build electricity at scale. That's sort of how you have to think about it."
"For us, what DeepSeek really reinforces and reaffirms is that there is this very real competition with very real stakes," Lehane added.
!summarize #aaronrodgers #nyjets #nfl
That led experts to question the prevailing wisdom in the West of the last several years, which is that China is behind the U.S. on AI development because of export restrictions that make it harder for firms in the country to get their hands on more advanced Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs.
GPUs are necessary for training and running AI applications because they excel at parallel processing, meaning they can perform multiple calculations simultaneously.
Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, told CNBC Monday that DeepSeek's new model is "a big deal in showing that the game is on."
The Jevons Paradox is when making something work better actually leads to using more of it, not less. Imagine you have a really fast bike that makes you use less energy to speed up. Because it’s so good, you want to bike everywhere, even more than before. Now, even though your bike is better at saving energy, you end up using it so much that you may use even more energy overall. The same thing happens with other resources like coal, water, or electricity. The Jevons Paradox happens because when things get easier or cheaper to use, we usually start using them more, which can cancel out the benefits of them being more efficient in the first place.
Here’s another way to think about it: Let’s say you have a super-efficient light bulb that uses very little electricity. You might think, “Since this bulb uses so little energy, I can keep more lights on without worry!” Suddenly, you’re using more light than before, which could end up using more electricity overall, even though each bulb is using less. This is the basic idea behind the Jevons Paradox—it shows how we can’t just rely on making things more efficient to use less of something.
"I think the short answer everyone should take is: game on — but large models still really matter," he added.
Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video platform Synthesia, told CNBC that although DeepSeek challenged the "paradigm that brute force scaling is the only way to kind of build better and better models," the idea that companies are going to suddenly shift significant amounts of their AI workloads is misguided.
"I still think that when you look at users of these technologies, all the workflows, I think when we look back in three months' time, I think 0.01% of those is going to be moved to Deepseek from OpenAI and Anthropic," Riparbelli said.
Meteorologists said several states would experience the 10th and coldest polar vortex event this season. Weather forces in the Arctic are combining to push the chilly air that usually stays near the North Pole into the U.S. and Europe.
In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said Sunday that the death toll rose to nine.
"I am sad to share some more tough news tonight, Kentucky. We just confirmed another weather-related death out of Pike County, bringing our total loss to 9 people."
For example, the company says ChatGPT should assert that “Black lives matter,” but also that “all lives matter.” Instead of refusing to answer or picking a side on political issues, OpenAI says it wants ChatGPT to affirm its “love for humanity” generally, then offer context about each movement.
“This principle may be controversial, as it means the assistant may remain neutral on topics some consider morally wrong or offensive,” OpenAI says in the spec. “However, the goal of an AI assistant is to assist humanity, not to shape it.”
Trump’s closest Silicon Valley confidants — including David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk — have all accused OpenAI of engaging in deliberate AI censorship over the last several months. We wrote in December that Trump’s crew was setting the stage for AI censorship to be a next culture war issue within Silicon Valley.
Of course, OpenAI doesn’t say it engaged in “censorship,” as Trump’s advisers claim. Rather, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, previously claimed in a post on X that ChatGPT’s bias was an unfortunate “shortcoming” that the company was working to fix, though he noted it would take some time.
Counteracting these problems was the availability of iron which was significant relative to the copper and tin supplies needed to manufacture bronze. Greece had to import both copper and tin from Cyprus and the Levant, while iron was available in the islands, Southern Peloponnese, Central Greece, and Macedonia. Manufacturing iron removed the dependence on materials from overseas and gave the Greeks the freedom to control their own supply of weapons and other metal objects.
Altman made that comment just after a viral tweet circulated in which ChatGPT refused to write a poem praising Trump, though it would perform the action for Joe Biden. Many conservatives pointed to this as an example of AI censorship.
While it’s impossible to say whether OpenAI was truly suppressing certain points of view, it’s a sheer fact that AI chatbots lean left across the board.
Even Elon Musk admits xAI’s chatbot is often more politically correct than he’d like. It’s not because Grok was “programmed to be woke” but more likely a reality of training AI on the open internet.
One of the most pressing issues in the film industry is piracy. Many users turn to illegal sources simply because a movie is unavailable in their country. Jipa argues that Olyn’s global reach can help combat this issue, because if someone can pay for a movie and watch it instantly, they’re much more likely to do so.
Olyn’s foray into film streaming came about partly when entrepreneur and filmmaker Wood joined as a co-founder of the platform, which initially launched as a way to catalog physical assets. Wood launched his own film, “The Last Glaciers,” on the platform.
“With Olyn, a filmmaker can still sell their rights to the U.S. market and use that to pre-fund the film, but then also capitalize on going direct-to-consumer in, say, Asia,” said Wood.
But could the platform be used by the adult film industry to distribute pornography?
Jipa acknowledged the challenge: “Right now, this is not the tone we want to set, and it would be easy to attract that category,” she said. “At the beginning, we are setting the tone by ensuring that the films featured on Olyn are high quality.”
DeepSeek did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The agency said DeepSeek recently appointed a local representative in South Korea and acknowledged that it was not familiar with South Korea’s privacy laws when it launched its service. The Chinese company also said last Friday that it would collaborate closely with Korean authorities.
Earlier this month, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, police, and a state-run company, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, temporarily blocked access to the Chinese AI startup on official devices citing security concerns.
At the time, Google said it was “fighting for an agreement that avoids passing along additional costs and offers [subscribers] more flexibility in how you watch your favorite sports and shows.” (Pay TV providers have reportedly been fighting for more flexible ways to bundle channels, particularly at the basic tiers of their services.)
Meanwhile, Paramount co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, and Brian Robbins sent employees an internal memo describing Google as “unwilling to agree to reasonable terms consistent with the market, choosing to jeopardize the entertainment experience at the expense of consumers.”
!summarize #Jordanpeterson #global #elite
!summarize #unitedstates #russia #ukraine #war #peacetalks
Elsewhere, the EU recently signed an $11 billion deal to create a sovereign satellite constellation to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
So OpenEuroLLM is certainly on-brand.
However, the stated budget just for building the models themselves is €37.4 million, with roughly €20 million coming from the EU’s Digital Europe Programme — a drop in the ocean compared to what the giants of the corporate AI world are investing. The actual budget is more when you factor in funding allocated for tangential and related work, and arguably the biggest expense is compute. The OpenEuroLLM project’s partners include EuroHPC supercomputer centers in Spain, Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands — and the broader EuroHPC project has a budget of around €7 billion.
!summarize #nyknicks #nba #basketball
!summarize #trump #thefed
“With respect to DeepSeek, we actually know very little about what exactly went into building it,” Peter Sarlin, who is technical co-lead on the OpenEuroLLM project, told TechCrunch.
Regardless, Sarlin reckons OpenEuroLLM will have access to sufficient funding, as it’s mostly to cover people. Indeed, a large chunk of the costs of building AI systems is compute, and that should mostly be covered through its partnership with the EuroHPC centers.
In the economic arena, Solon encouraged fathers to find professions for their sons. Foreign tradesmen were given incentives to settle in Athens in order to stimulate trade. Cultivation of olives was encouraged, but export of other foodstuffs prohibited. Weights and standards were improved to make Athenian goods more competitive.
These reforms pleased no one and everyone causing Solon to characterize himself as “a wolf turning around among many dogs”. His work done, he resigned the Archonship and left Athens for ten years. Unfortunately his reforms were too moderate to create permanent stability and the rivalry continued among the aristocratic families.
!summarize #time #psychics #entropy #information #maxwellsdemon
Dr. Fauvelle did acknowledge criticism in the direction of his discourse surrounding the dangers of international travel. Traders would not have carried that much cash on them. In the two aforementioned societies, however, their form of currency was a commodity that eventually became financial money.
His trade theory differs from conventional approaches but avoids the “myth of barter.” Most studies have more or less ruled out the idea that a purely barter-based society existed.
The California shell bead money and bronze ingots demonstrate that a unified form of currency circulated outside a group. Furthermore, the shell beads became increasingly socially significant as they appeared in rituals, presenting another meaning to money.
Trittys are groups of three Demes so each tribe consisted of nine Demes.
He also took Solon’s council of 400 and made it a council of 500 containing fifty representatives from each of the ten tribes. Members were chosen by lot making it the most democratic body possible.
These two great innovations created the political stability that would propel Athens forward for two hundred and fifty years. The new organization was a “democracy” because it gave direct power to the people through the assembly, and that power was greater than that held by the aristocratic families.
The first ultra-hard diamond, lonsdaleite, was discovered in the Canyon Diablo meteorite in Arizona in 1967. While scientists have since found it challenging to recreate the same artificially, the Chinese research team has come up with a method to synthesize nearly pure, well-crystallized hexagonal diamonds from graphite, the South China Morning Post reported.
The study states that the synthetic diamond is of high quality and possesses excellent physical properties. It is 40% harder than natural diamonds and has greater thermal stability than nanodiamonds, which are smaller than 100 nanometers.
The authors further explain that the hexagonal diamond’s excellent thermal stability and ultra-high hardness suggest its great potential for industrial applications. They also noted that their findings provide valuable insights into the graphite-to-diamond conversion under elevated pressure and temperature, opening up opportunities for the fabrication and use of this unique material.
US researchers previously created hexagonal diamonds
The is not the first time the diamond has been developed in the lab. In 2021, a group of US researchers reported creating hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure their stiffness using sound waves.
MenteeBot V3.0 can walk up to 1.5 meters per second and is 175 cm tall. With a lifting capacity of up to 55 pounds (25 kilograms), it is a powerful tool. The redesigned hands provide improved control over items, a more firm hold, and resistance to impacts.
The firm claims that with its hot-swappable battery system, the robot can operate continuously for more than three hours without any disruptions. In challenging environments, this capability guarantees round-the-clock functionality.
At its core, MenteeBot V3.0 is powered by dual Jetson Orin AGX processors, enabling advanced AI capabilities and real-time decision-making. This combination of power, intelligence, and durability makes it a highly capable humanoid robot for various tasks.
It will also reach five major continents – making it the world’s longest subsea cable project using the highest-capacity technology available.
Meta says that Project Waterworth will bring top-notch connectivity to the United States, India, Brazil, South Africa, and other important regions.
“This project will enable greater economic cooperation, facilitate digital inclusion, and open opportunities for technological development in these regions,” the blog states.
It goes on to mention that it will help to accelerate, for example, the digital economy plans of India.
The company has been involved in developing over 20 subsea cables in the past decade. Meta also states that it has also succeeded in multiple deployments of subsea cables of 24 fiber pairs – compared to the typical 8 to 16 fiber pairs of other new systems.
Men want a better life. Far too often a promotion at work is a demotion in life. The promotion is usually an increase in exploitation far beyond the increase in fortune for a company that will use you up, burn you out, and throw you away at any time for any reason (including no reason) without warning at the drop of a hat. In terms of their lives, the promoted person often loses more than they gain. The paycheck gain isn't worth the life lost.
Bohannan dates the beginning of factory industrialism to the time of the invention of the steam engine, circa 1760. To him, the steam engine set the stage for modern mass production. My position is that the capitalism of antiquity started the dislocation of the kinship unit long before factory industrialization became a reality.
Capitalism is a economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
This strategic move aligns with the broader industry trend of vertical integration, where companies seek to control key aspects of the supply chain, from raw material extraction to finished product manufacturing.
BYD advances solid-state battery technology
In a separate development, BYD has achieved significant progress in solid-state battery technology.
At the China All-Solid-State Battery Innovation and Development Summit Forum, Sun Huajun, Chief Technology Officer of Shenzhen BYD Lithium Battery, revealed that the company has successfully produced 60Ah all-solid-state batteries from its pilot production line.
BYD plans to begin mass demonstrations and installations of solid-state batteries around 2027, with large-scale commercialization expected after 2030.
Solid-state batteries offer significant advantages over conventional lithium-ion batteries in terms of energy density, safety, and longevity. They are expected to increase the efficiency and adoption of EVs.
Fast forward to the present, where the industrial society is in full bloom. Are we now seeing the final destruction of the family unit because both husband and wife have to work to provide for themselves and their children? Without kin available as substitute caregivers, children are being outsourced to day care and sports coaches, who act as parental surrogates, while the nuclear family disintegrates.
We began this post by describing how mankind organized himself in groups because it saw the advantages of doing so. Was this purely out of necessity or are we inherently social beings as some suggest? Social networking is highly criticized today as being “against human behavior” because communications are not face to face. Perhaps we are adapting to a new kind of kinship with its own benefits – the kind that breaks the boundaries of geography.
There were two main drivers for the differentiation of the lower classes: demand for goods and services by the wealthy and demand for community-wide specialized skills resulting from growth of the population. The wealthy were interested in the goods required to support the prestige of their position – fancy clothing, exotic foods, jewelry, perfume, transportation, and tutors for their children. They also had idle time which needed to be filled by social events, travel, or sport.
The Nobility was a sub-class consisting of those individuals who were able to climb above the rest of the middle class. One might call this group “new money” describing a recent status change as opposed to the “old money” of the permanently wealthy. The nobility included those who were either intelligent or resourceful enough to rise to a position of authority or wealth. During the period of the Roman Republic, the Knights (Equites) were the nobility class. Originally cavalry men who were wealthy enough to buy horses and equipment, the knights later took the role of businessmen, working at professions deemed inferior by the patricians, but necessary to them. Cicero was a classic example. Raised as a pleb, he so impressed the elites by his legal skill and oratory, he was elevated to the nobility.
In the history of human society slavery has two types - intra-tribal and extra-tribal. Intra-tribal slavery occurs when members of a community lose their status and fall into a subservient position. An example would be someone who cannot repay his debts or commits a serious crime. Extra-tribal slavery occurs when one group is defeated in war by another and is absorbed into the victor’s population.
Often, the existence of a slave class has an adverse effect on the society. As unpaid laborers, the slaves contribute to high productivity, but they also displace the lower classes from the job market. During the Roman Republic, the accumulation of wealth among a few patricians and their use of slave labor to work their estates led to the death of the small farm and the unemployment of the small farmer. Eventually, there was an exodus of displaced persons to Rome where they became restless urban poor.
!summarize #dating #bar #relationships #men #women
UK students crush world record by levitating soap bubble for 84 minutes
The students let the bubble float mid air for a full 84 minutes before they popped it themselves.
Two third-year university students may have just claimed the world record for the longest-lasting soap bubble, after creating one on their own as part of an extracurricular school project and keeping it in the air for an incredible hour and 24 minutes.
England’s University of Exeter physics juniors Boden Duffy and Joe Nightingale put their bubble to the ultimate test on February 10, and made their bid for a Guinness Book of Record in their soundproof lab on campus.
For the bubbles, the duo utilized an acoustic levitation machine – a specialized instrument designed to suspend objects mid-air using sound waves by creating acoustic radiation pressure.
Acoustic levitation – which works both in normal and reduced gravity – is a phenomenon that uses the power of sound waves to make solids, liquids, and heavy gases float.
Standing at no more than a few millimeters wide, the water-and-soap droplets were flattened into a thin disk and curled into a bubble within a split second.
The team caught the rapid process – showing one device shaping the bubble as another one was keeping it levitated – with a high-speed camera capable of recording motion with exposures shorter than 1/1,000 of a second.
China’s DeepSeek has made innovations in the cost of AI and innovations like mixture of experts (MoE) and fine-grain expert segmentation which significantly improve efficiency in large language models. The DeepSeek model activates only about 37 billion parameters out of its total 600+ billion parameters during inference, compared to models like Llama that activate all parameter. This results in dramatically reduced compute costs for both training and inference.
Others have been using mixture of experts (MoE) but DeepSeek R1 aggressively scaled to the number of experts within the model.
A White House official told Reuters on Friday that President Trump’s administration might not support Intel’s US chip factories being operated by a foreign entity after Bloomberg reported that TSMC was considering taking a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at Trump’s request.
The White House official said the Trump administration supported foreign companies investing and building in the US but was “unlikely” to support a foreign firm operating Intel’s factories.
Bloomberg reported that Trump’s team raised the idea of a deal between the two firms in recent meetings with officials from TSMC who were receptive, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who was ousted last year, set sky-high expectations for Intel’s manufacturing and AI capabilities among major clients but fell short, leading to the chipmaker losing or canceling contracts, Reuters reported previously.
Intel’s shares lost about 60% of their value last year as its capital-intensive bid to bolster manufacturing – a strategy championed by Gelsinger – strained the company’s cash flow and ultimately led to it cutting about 15% of its workforce
Among the notable areas of Chinese excellence is defense and space-related tech. These are the seven categories in which the U.S. leads China in the tracker:
High-performance computing
Advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication
Natural language processing (including speech and text recognition and analysis)
Quantum computing
Vaccines and medical countermeasures
Small satellites
Space launch systems
"Western democracies are losing the global technological competition, including the race for scientific and research breakthroughs, and the ability to retain global talent — crucial ingredients that underpin the development and control of the world's most important technologies, including those that don't yet exist," according to the report.
"Australia is in the top five for nine technologies, followed closely by Italy (seven technologies), Iran (six), Japan (four) and Canada (four). Russia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, France, Malaysia and the Netherlands are in the top five for one or two technologies. A number of other countries, including Spain and Turkey, regularly make the top 10 countries but aren't in the top five."
Russia's Lavrov: Can Be 'No Thought of' Territorial Concessions to Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday there could be "no thought of" Russian territorial concessions to Ukraine at future peace talks.
Russia in September 2022 declared that it had annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, an assertion Ukraine and many Western countries rejected as absurd and illegal.
The AI inference price improvements have been consistent but the surprise from Deepseek is that this latest push was not by OpenAI or Meta.
Google Gemini Flash 2.0 is lower cost per million tokens and gives faster answers than Deepseek.
OpenAI o3-mini has competitive pricing. It higher on input but output is twice as expensive.
Those who are building AI data centers and training models know that AI will continue to get much better and cheaper. The expectation is the demand for really good AI will increase despite cost improvements. There is energy efficiency and design choices that Deepseek has highlighted. They optimized coding by directly accessing the hardware of Nvidia GPUs. There are many companies exploring FPGA hardware encoding of logic.
NY Giants rumors are heating up as the 2025 NFL Draft is just over 2 months away. Giants trade rumors are buzzing as reports are coming out from NFL insiders that the Giants will look to trade up to the #1 pick in the NFL Draft with the Titans. ESPN recently put out an article highlighting what the cost of the trade would be and how likely the Titans are to move the pick. New York Giants Now by Chat Sports host Marshall Green shares his thoughts on the latest Giants news and rumors in this NFL Draft video!
Hegseth — one of Trump’s more controversial cabinet picks — was confirmed as secretary of defense in January.
Opponents argued that his prior experience – which included serving as a Fox News contributor but no government work – left him ill-equipped to run the nation’s military.
He also was facing allegations of sexual misconduct, claims of alcohol problems, accusations that several of his tattoos were coded white supremacy messages and alleged financial mismanagement of the veterans groups he oversaw.
But supporters cited his years of service in both the Army and as a veterans’ advocate in arguing for his confirmation.
They characterized the allegations against him as an organized effort by establishment Democrats to derail his appointment.
Fed Governor Bowman says more progress on inflation is needed before further rate cuts
The Fed official called for more progress on inflation before the central bank engages in further interest rate cuts.
Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said on Monday that while monetary policy "is now in a good place," she wants to see data reflect more progress on inflation before cutting interest rates further.
"I would like to gain greater confidence that progress in lowering inflation will continue as we consider making further adjustments to the target range," Bowman said in a speech at the American Bankers Association.
Toynbee considers both versions suspect because they each appear to support rival power factions in the evolving Spartan political system – the kings and the Ephorate. The kings would have advanced the Pythia story because that would create a link between Spartan royalty and the gods. The Ephors would have supported the story of Cretan origins because the Cretan system had a similar office.
But Bregman is a far superior defensive third baseman than Devers.
Last year, Devers finished -9 defensive runs saved and a -2.6 WAR on defense, according to Fangraphs, while Bregman had six defensive runs saved and a defensive WAR of 8.1.
Potentially further complicating matters for Boston is the fact top prospects Kristian Campbell and Marcelo Mayer are on the way and may need spots in the infield soon.
Devers is entering just the second season of a 10-year, $313.5 million contract he signed prior to 2024 and said Monday his defensive future was discussed at the time.
Landtman starts with the notion of equality as a measure of human society. What is equality? We know that people are not physically or mentally equal, so how can they be equal in society? We can create laws that apply to everyone, but still some will be find an advantage or disadvantage in those laws. In America, we like to think we have equal opportunity, which is a practical form of equality, but even here we must admit that opportunities are only equal for those with equal capabilities and an equal starting point.
We need to let the Spartans rest for a while and move on to other things, namely a discussion of socio-economic class in the history of human society. A pioneer in studying the subject was Gunnar Landtman, the first modern sociological anthropologist. Landtman was Finnish (1878-1940) and he is best known for his study of the cultural behavior of the Papuan tribes of the Pacific. This, and other research he performed, became the basis for one of his best known works, The Origin of the Inequality of the Social Classes.
A Delta Air Lines regional jet appeared overturned after crashing upon landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport Monday afternoon. At least nine people were injured, an official said.
All passengers and crew were accounted for, the airport said, adding emergency crews were responding at the scene and flights to the airport were halted.
Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 originated in Minneapolis and landed in Toronto.
!summarize #elonmusk #grok #xai #ai
'Game on': Tech execs say DeepSeek ramps up China-U.S. competition but won't hurt OpenAI
At France's AI Action Summit, tech bosses told CNBC that DeepSeek demonstrates that China can't be counted out as a serious player in AI.
The technological advances that Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek have displayed show the game is on when it comes to U.S.-Sino competition on AI, top tech executives told CNBC.
In a series of interviews at France's Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, leaders of several major tech companies told CNBC that the emergence of DeepSeek demonstrates that China can't be counted out as a serious player when it comes to AI innovation.
#deepseek #china #unitedstates #openai #ai
Last month, DeepSeek shocked global markets with a technical paper saying that one of its new AI models was created with a total training cost of less than $6 million — far less than the billions upon billions of dollars being spent by Big Tech players and Western AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC that DeepSeek's advanced, low-cost model confirms there is a "very real competition between U.S.-led, small D democratic AI and CCP [Chinese Communist Party] China-led autocratic, authoritarian AI."
!summarize #generalmotots #china #car #factory #automotive
!summarize #byd #battery #solidstate
OpenAI tries to 'uncensor' ChatGPT
OpenAI is changing how it trains AI models to explicitly embrace “intellectual freedom … no matter how challenging or controversial a topic may be,” the company says in a new policy.
As a result, ChatGPT will eventually be able to answer more questions, offer more perspectives, and reduce the number of topics the AI chatbot won’t talk about.
The changes might be part of OpenAI’s effort to land in the good graces of the new Trump administration, but it also seems to be part of a broader shift in Silicon Valley and what’s considered “AI safety.”
#openai #uncensor #chatgpt #training #ai
On Wednesday, OpenAI announced an update to its Model Spec, a 187-page document that lays out how the company trains AI models to behave. In it, OpenAI unveiled a new guiding principle: Do not lie, either by making untrue statements or by omitting important context.
In a new section called “Seek the truth together,” OpenAI says it wants ChatGPT to not take an editorial stance, even if some users find that morally wrong or offensive. That means ChatGPT will offer multiple perspectives on controversial subjects, all in an effort to be neutral.
Mistral releases regional model focused on Arabic language and culture
The next frontier for large language models (LLMs), one of the key technologies underpinning the boom in generative AI tools, might be geographical. On Monday, Paris-based AI startup Mistral — which is vying to rival the likes of U.S.-based Anthropic and OpenAI — is releasing a model that’s a bit different from its usual LLM.
Named Mistral Saba, the new custom-trained model is designed to address a specific geography: Arabic speaking countries. The goal for Mistral Saba is to excel in Arabic interactions.
#llms #mistral #arabic #geography
Mistral Saba is a relatively small model with 24 billion parameters. As a reminder, fewer parameters generally leads to better performance with lower latency. But more parameters usually means smarter answers, even though it’s not a linear correlation.
Mistral Saba is comparable in size to Mistral Small 3, its general purpose small model. But, according to Mistral’s own tests, Mistral Saba performs much better than Mistral Small 3 when handling Arabic content.
!summarize #tesla #modelq #ev #unitedstates
South Korea blocks downloads of DeepSeek from local app stores
South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily restricted Chinese AI Lab DeepSeek’s app from being downloaded from app stores in the country pending an assessment of how the Chinese company handles user data.
The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said the Chinese app would be available to be downloaded once it complies with Korean privacy laws and makes the necessary changes.
#southkorea #deepseek #appstore #ai #ban
The restrictions will not affect usage of the existing app and web service in the country. However, the data protection authority said it “strongly advises” current users to avoid entering personal information into DeepSeek until its final decision is made.
Following the release of the DeepSeek service in South Korea in late January, the PIPC said it reached out to the Chinese AI lab to inquire how it collects and processes personal data, and in its evaluation, found issues with DeepSeek’s third-party service and privacy policies.
The PICC confirmed to TechCrunch that its investigation found DeepSeek had transferred data of South Korean users to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
YouTube TV reaches new deal to keep Paramount content
After warnings that Paramount content was about to disappear from Google’s pay TV service YouTube TV, the companies announced late Saturday that they’d reached a deal that averts any disruption to channel availability.
Those announcements didn’t include many specifics about the agreement, but a statement from a Paramount spokesperson said it includes “an expanded streaming relationship.” So not only will YouTube Primetime Channels continue to offer streaming services Paramount+, with Showtime and BET+ as add-ons, but Google also gets “the right to make Paramount+ available to qualifying YouTube TV customers.”
#youtube #paramount #google #television
YouTube TV is no stranger to high-profile contract disputes with media companies, including Disney. In its own announcement, Google said, “We’re happy to share that we’ve reached a deal to continue carrying Paramount channels, including CBS, CBS Sports, Nickelodeon and more … To our subscribers, we appreciate your patience while we negotiated on your behalf.”
The company had warned in an earlier blog post that all Paramount content, including CBS and CBS Sports, would disappear from YouTube TV on February 13. There was a short-term deadline extension when the companies appeared to be close to a deal.
Ultra-hard ‘super diamond’ developed in China, 40% stronger than natural diamonds
Chinese researchers have successfully synthesized a rare ultra-hard diamond, first discovered in meteorites, showing promise for advanced industrial applications..
A group of scientists from two universities in China have created an ultra-hard, high-quality ‘super diamond’ in the lab that is many times stronger than naturally occurring diamonds.
The team responsible for the breakthrough believes their creation could have applications in key sectors, as diamonds are already widely utilized in industries like cutting and polishing tools. While most natural and synthetic diamonds have a cubic structure, ultra-hard diamonds, known as lonsdaleite, have a hexagonal crystal structure.
#diamond #china #natural #artificial
Until now, the hardest diamonds were found only in impact craters, making them both rare and small. However, researchers from Jilin University, led by Liu Bingbing and Yao Mingguang—along with Zhu Shengcai from Sun Yat-sen University in Shenzhen— have found that graphite formed a structure called the ‘post-graphite phase’.
This resulted in the formation of a hexagonal diamond when compressed and heated under extremely high pressure. The findings of the team have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Materials earlier this month.
Israeli firm unveils humanoid robot with 360° vision, 3x power and precision
The robot features head-mounted sensors and a 360-degree vision system with back and fisheye side cameras for full environmental awareness.
Israel’s Mentee Robotics has unveiled an updated version of its versatile Menteebot humanoid.
MenteeBot V3.0 is a fully integrated humanoid robot with full-stack AI and proprietary hardware.
Custom-built actuators provide up to three times more power, enhanced precision, and higher power density compared to competitors, ensuring superior performance and efficiency in robotic applications.
In April 2024, the firm first unveiled its AI-enabled household chore robot, Menteebot, which is designed for corporate and domestic use.
#israel #robot #humanoid #vision #power
The latest MenteeBot V3.0 is built for strength, precision, and endurance. It features custom-built actuators that deliver three times more power than competitors, improving efficiency and movement accuracy. Its redesigned torso enhances flexibility, allowing for more agile and precise task execution.
The robot has sophisticated head-mounted sensors for enhanced awareness, giving it a comprehensive picture of its environment. Full environmental coverage is ensured via a 360-degree vision system that uses a back camera and fisheye side cameras.
31,068 miles: Meta plans world’s longest subsea cable to connect 5 continents
The company has been involved in developing over 20 subsea cables in the past decade.
Meta has announced its most ambitious subsea cable project – named Project Waterworth – which will reach five major continents.
The multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment project was announced through a blog post by the company.
Meta says that it will strengthen the scale and reliability of the “world’s digital highways by opening three new oceanic corridors with the abundant, high speed connectivity needed to drive AI innovation around the world.”
#meta #subsea #cable #internet #projectwaterworth
The company says that artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing each aspect of our lives. Therefore, Meta wants to be at the forefront of driving these new technologies. Project Waterworth, as per the blog, will help ensure that the benefits of AI and other emerging technologies are made available to more and more people across the globe.
Project Waterworth – subsea cable project
Project Waterworth is the biggest subsea cable project attempted by the company so far. According to the announcement made in the blog post by Meta’s Gaya Nagarajan, vice-president, Network Engineering, and Alex-Handrah Aimé, Global Head, Network Investments.
The blog post states that the project will span over 31,068 miles (over 50,000 kilometers) – which is even longer than the Earth’s circumference.
Is this an ai bot on the platform?
meta is getting into robots—here’s why that matters
meta is building a robotics team inside reality labs, aiming to create the core tech—sensors, ai, and software—that other companies can use in their robots. think of it like android for robots: meta doesn’t want to make the hardware itself but be the foundation everyone builds on. with its vr, ar, and ai expertise, this move makes sense. big question: will this be another metaverse flop or something game-changing?
#meta #robotics #ai #future #technology
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reddit wants you to pay for some subs—will it work?
reddit is testing a paid subreddit feature set to launch later this year. ceo steve huffman confirmed it in a recent ama. big question: who moderates? volunteer mods might not want to work for free if the content isn’t. creators could put exclusive posts behind paywalls, kinda like patreon but with actual community convos. still a lot to figure out—will people actually pay?
#reddit #socialmedia #subscriptions #creatoreconomy #technology
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CRISPR Just Got Smaller and That’s a Big Deal
One of CRISPR’s biggest problems? It’s too bulky to deliver easily. Mammoth Biosciences just shrunk it down. Their new NanoCas is about a third the size of CRISPR-Cas9, making it way easier to use in gene therapy—think muscles, brain, and heart. The team is already eyeing brain diseases, and the tech could also be tweaked for epigenetic or base editing. This could be a huge leap for medicine.
#crispr #genetherapy #biotech #health #technology
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NASA's Blue Ghost Is About to Make History on the Moon
NASA's Blue Ghost lander just reached lunar orbit and is gearing up for a March 2 landing. It’s carrying 10 payloads, while a Japanese-built rover that launched alongside it is packing five more. The rover will touch down in Atlas Crater, Mare Frigoris, where it’ll test space farming, radiation levels, water electrolysis, and regolith collection. This mission could shape the future of lunar exploration—and maybe even how we grow food on the Moon.
#nasa #moonlanding #spacetech #exploration #technology
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iPhone 17 Pro: Big Camera Bump, Same Layout?
Apple leaker Jon Prosser says the iPhone 17 Pro will keep its triangular camera setup but get a bigger bump on the back—so much for those horizontal camera rumors. He also denies reports of a smaller Dynamic Island, though details on the design and materials are still fuzzy. If true, Apple seems to be doubling down on its signature look rather than shaking things up.
#iphone #apple #smartphones #technews #technology
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Grok 3 Drops Monday, Here’s Why It Matters
xAI’s Grok 3 is coming this Monday, and it’s a beast. Trained with 200 million GPU-hours (imagine a supercomputer running non-stop for decades), it’s got sharper reasoning, better self-correction, and training on synthetic data. Translation? It learns faster, makes fewer mistakes, and understands complex ideas better. If AI were a student, Grok 3 just went from honor roll to valedictorian.
#ai #machinelearning #grok #elonmusk #technology
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!summarize #ai #creators #future #content
China’s BYD secures lithium mining for EV production, use solid-state batteries by 2027
This strategic location, close to the company’s planned electric vehicle factory in Bahia state, Brazil, offers BYD a significant advantage.
China-based BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) maker, seems to be strengthening its position in the industry through two significant developments.
These developments include securing lithium mining rights in Brazil and achieving a breakthrough in solid-state battery technology.
As reported by Reuters, which discovered new documents, BYD has secured mineral rights to two plots of land in Brazil through its subsidiary Exploracao Mineral do Brasil.
#china #byd #Lithium #mining #ev #solidstate #batteries
The land totaling 852 hectares is located in Coronel Murta, a municipality in the Jequitinhonha Valley of Minas Gerais, known as Brazil’s “Lithium Valley.”
Will enable vertical integration
The location of these reserves makes this acquisition highly significant for BYD. The two plots of land are close to the company’s planned electric vehicle factory in Bahia state, Brazil.
For reference, Coronel Murta is around 512 miles away from BYD’s planned factory, which is expected to begin production soon.
Earlier, the company had asserted that the factory would be capable of manufacturing 150,000 electric vehicles annually.
This will enable BYD to access lithium reserves close to its production facility and establish a cost-effective supply chain for this critical battery component.
It is, however, not the first time that BYD has invested in lithium mining operations. The company has already undertaken such activities within China and participated in bids for Chilean lithium projects.
even before this news I realized that their sales in the Caribbean region is growing mostly due to their price point and concessions from banks.
Broadcom, TSMC eye deals that would split storied chipmaker Intel: report
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Broadcom are each eyeing potential deals that would break Intel in two, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Intel rivals Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Broadcom are each eyeing potential deals that would break the US chipmaking icon in two, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Broadcom has been closely examining Intel’s chip design and marketing business, the Journal reported, adding that the company had discussed a potential bid with its advisers but would likely only proceed if it found a partner for Intel’s manufacturing business.
#broadcom #tsmc #chips #semiconductor
TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, has separately studied controlling some or all of Intel’s chip plants, potentially as part of an investor consortium or other structure, the report said.
Broadcom and TSMC are not working together, and all of the talks so far are preliminary and largely informal, the Journal added.
Intel’s interim executive chairman, Frank Yeary, has been leading the discussions with possible suitors and Trump administration officials, who are concerned about the fate of a company seen as critical to national security, the report said.
Yeary has been telling individuals close to him that he is most focused on maximizing value for Intel shareholders, the report added.
China Leads World in 37 Out of 44 Technologies
China is dominating the globe as a science and technology superpower, leading the world in 37 out of 44 technology sectors examined by an Australian think tank.
China is dominating the globe as a science and technology superpower, leading the world in 37 out of 44 technology sectors examined by an Australian think tank.
"Our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world's leading science and technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains," according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in its Critical Technology Tracker.
#china #technology #science #superpower #unitedstates
"China's global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defense, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas."
In the other seven technologies, the United States was second-fiddle to China.
Also, according to APSI, China is home to "all of the world's top 10 leading research institutions" and generates "nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the U.S.)."
!summarize #llm #ai #rishniratnam
!summarize #technology #ai