“We are primarily focusing on utilizing the large investments in terrestrial solar for space, which has tremendous value for space,” said Peter Toth chief executive officer and co-founder of Extraterrestrial Power.
“Importantly, we are only utilizing technologies that allow high throughput manufacturing, which enables satellites being manufactured in high volumes necessary for low earth orbit (LEO) constellations,” he added.
The company first demonstrated its solar cells on Caltech’s space-based solar power experiment in 2023. This experiment made history by wirelessly transmitting power in space and beaming it to Earth for the first time.
That was shortly followed in 2024 when the cells took a ride-share on Waratah Seed. The New South Wales government supported this mission with various cutting-edge technologies on board.
Making solar cells in space
“Since thin solar cells use less materials, but we still need to maintain high efficiencies, they will have applications on Earth for lightweight usage initially—and wider uses later,” Toth explained.
Next-gen smart cars with advanced AI capabilities
Recently, the Chinese EV maker made headlines by partnering with artificial intelligence company DeepSeek to integrate its R1 LLM model with the next generation of smart cars.
The automaker will now conduct distillation training on its Xingrui car control FunctionCall AI model using DeepSeek’s R1, enhancing the smaller model’s performance by leveraging outputs from a more advanced AI system.
More hands mean more work and more increase. If your heart within you desires wealth, do these things and work with work upon work.
[405] First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox for the plow—a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen as well—and make everything ready at home, so that you may not have to ask of another, and he refuse you, and so, because you are in lack, the season pass by and your work come to nothing.
Then remember to hew your timber: it is the season for that work. Cut a mortar three feet wide and a pestle three cubits long, and an axle of seven feet, for it will do very well so; [425] but if you make it eight feet long, you can cut a beetle from it as well. Cut a felloe (wagon wheel) three spans across for a wagon of ten palms' width.
Still, tech bosses largely agreed that even though DeepSeek's breakthrough shows China being further along in the global AI race than previously thought, the threat it poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.
'The game is on'
DeepSeek says that its new R1 model, an open-source reasoning model, was able to rival the performance of OpenAI's own similar o1 model — only using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.
"The competition is afoot with China," Hoffman said, adding that DeepSeek's R1 is "a credible, actionable model."
Abishur Prakash, founder of strategic advisory firm The Geopolitical Business, told CNBC that DeepSeek shows the West's understanding of China remains limited.
A report from semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis last month estimated that DeepSeek's hardware expenditure is "well higher" than $500 million over the company's history. DeepSeek was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The report found that DeepSeek's research and development costs and expenses related to ownership are significant and that generating "synthetic data" for the model to train on would require "considerable amount of compute."
Some technologists believe that DeepSeek may have been able to achieve such a high level of performance by training its models on larger U.S. AI systems.
This technique, known as "distillation," involves having more powerful AI models evaluate the quality of answers being generated by a newer model.
It's a claim that OpenAI itself has alluded to, telling CNBC in a statement last month that it's reviewing reports that DeepSeek may have "inappropriately" used output data from its models to develop its AI model, a method referred to as "distillation."
'Life-Threatening Cold' Polar Vortex Dips Into US
After winter storms pummeled the eastern U.S. over the weekend, harsh weather moved west Monday as a polar vortex was expected to grip the Rockies and the northern plains.
Harsh weather moved west Monday as a polar vortex was expected to grip the Rockies and the northern Plains after winter storms pummeled the eastern U.S. over the weekend, killing at least 10 people, including nine victims in Kentucky who died during flooding from heavy rains.
The National Weather Service warned of "life-threatening cold" into Tuesday, with temperatures in northeastern Montana predicted to dip as low as 45 degrees below zero (-42.7 degrees Celsius) with wind chills down to 60 below (-51 degrees Celsius).
"The effects will continue for awhile, a lot of swollen streams and a lot of flooding going on," Oravec said Sunday.
In Alabama, the weather service in Birmingham said it had confirmed an EF-1 tornado touched down in Hale County. Storms there and elsewhere in the state destroyed or damaged a handful of mobile homes, downed trees and toppled power lines, but no injuries were immediately reported.
A state of emergency was declared for parts of Obion County, Tennessee, after a levee failed on Saturday, flooding the small community of Rives, home to around 300 people in the western part of the state. "There will be mandatory evacuations in effect for the residents in Rives due to the rising water, no electricity, and freezing temperatures creating a life-threatening situation," Mayor Steve Carr said in a statement Sunday.
The Bronze Age in Europe began in 3000 B.C. and gave way to the Iron Age circa 1100 B.C. While the overlap of these ages occurred at different times in different places, Greece was true to the 1100 B.C. date as it began the transition to iron manufacturing and the replacement of bronze.
In Atlanta, a person was killed when a large tree fell on a home early Sunday, according to Atlanta Fire Rescue Capt. Scott Powell.
Dangerously cold wind chill temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero (minus 45.6) were expected in most of North Dakota, which remained under an "extreme cold warning" along with large swaths of South Dakota and Minnesota, according to the weather service.
Water submerged cars and buildings in Kentucky and mudslides blocked roads in Virginia over the weekend. Flood warnings extended throughout Tennessee and Arkansas.
We begin our study by examining the technical details of iron making because they shed light on how iron processing developed and paved the way for the practical use of the metal. Although the first iron used by man came from meteorites, wrought iron was the first class of iron manufactured, perhaps as early as the second millennium B.C. Wrought iron proved inadequate for general use because slag embedded in the metal prevented it from being sufficiently hardened.
To produce high quality iron, the blacksmiths of antiquity had to learn carburization (getting carbon into the iron), quenching, and tempering (strengthening through hammering). Their experience with bronze was no help because bronze production is very different and only requires hammering. The ancient smiths could produce fires that were hot enough, but it was not until they started using charcoal that they noticed carbon being taken into the metal. Quenching and tempering is a more complicated process because you have to know when the metal is ready to hammer and when to apply heat a second time.
The mother and child were swept away Saturday night in Kentucky’s Bonnieville community, Hart County Coroner Tony Roberts said. In southeastern Kentucky, a 73-year-old man was found dead in floodwaters in Clay County, county Emergency Management Deputy Director Revelle Berry said. There were a total of four deaths in Hart County, Beshear said.
The Kentucky River Medical Center in the city of Jackson said it had closed its emergency department and transferred all patients to two other hospitals in the region due to a nearby river flooding.
High winds brought down trees and power poles across Albermarle County, Virginia. The Charlottesville Police Department said Sunday on social media that officers’ response times could be delayed due to "an overwhelming number of weather-related calls for service." Police urged residents to stay off the roads.
Once the Greeks discovered carburization, they were able to produce thin carburized products (swords). For thicker uses (axes), they had to layer together a series of thin pieces of iron to overcome the problem of getting carbon into thick pieces of the metal.
Quenching is mentioned in the Odyssey, so much of the iron manufacturing technique had evolved by the time of Homer, but the timeline of the development of the full process remains obscure. Using iron artifacts for dating is difficult because the climate of the Greek Peninsula corrodes most examples beyond identification.
There is evidence of Minoan and Mycenaean iron working, but only at the tail end of the Mycenaean efforts do we see a link to what the Greeks would accomplish later. Examples of these early efforts are knives that have their handles attached with bronze rivets. Unfortunately, the sub-Mycenaean period yields little in the way of iron objects.
Power outages were reported along much of the eastern seaboard, from New York south to Georgia.
In West Virginia, 13 southern counties were under a state of emergency for flooding and some areas were cut off to vehicle traffic Sunday. Several volunteer fire departments dealt with flooding in their own buildings while answering rescue and evacuation calls.
Ice and snow made road travel treacherous in large swaths of Michigan, which remained under a winter weather advisory until Monday afternoon. Michigan State Police reported 114 crashes Sunday around the Detroit area since snow started falling Saturday.
It’s is not until the beginning of the Proto-geometric Period that we begin to see significant iron in Attica. These objects date from the middle of the eleventh century.
During the early, middle, and late Geometric periods (ending in 700 B.C.) we see a combination or iron and bronze metalwork in graves. Iron dominates as the metal of weaponry. The reason for this is that iron is 12% lighter than bronze and able to hold its sharpness longer, making it the metal of choice for swords and spears.
Also in Colorado, three state patrol cruisers that had pulled over along roadsides were struck by other vehicles, including one on Sunday where a trooper had stopped as officials prepared to close a road because of ice. In each case the troopers were out of their cruisers at the time and were uninjured.
Avalanche warnings were issued for numerous areas of the Rocky Mountains stretching from Colorado to Washington state, with the danger rated highest in Utah.
Measuring the hardness of ancient objects tells us about the quality of the technique and the relative value of the materials. Copper has a Brinell (hardness) value of 35. Mix it with 10% tin produces a bronze alloy with a hardness of 88. Wrought iron is about 100 and modern steel is 100-150 before forging and 246 after. If you hammer the bronze alloy you can drive the hardness to 228, proving that bronze was adequate in hardness when compared to iron. Two Egyptian iron knives have been discovered, air dried and not quenched, with a hardness of 302 – a stunning example of craftsmanship.
The new Model Spec doesn’t mean that ChatGPT is a total free-for-all now. The chatbot will still refuse to answer certain objectionable questions or respond in a way that supports blatant falsehoods.
These changes could be seen as a response to conservative criticism about ChatGPT’s safeguards, which have always seemed to skew center-left. However, an OpenAI spokesperson rejects the idea that it was making changes to appease the Trump administration.
In the end, there were two main difficulties with transitioning completely from bronze to iron in Greece. In the first place the process of making iron products continued to be very technical and the number of smiths with mastery over it were relatively small. Secondly, many items made of bronze were cast in molds – a process that could not be performed in iron until centuries later. The iron making skill varied by geography and some locations were decades behind others in developing the craft, probably due to the lack of skilled smiths.
Nevertheless, OpenAI now says it’s doubling down on free speech. This week, the company even removed warnings from ChatGPT that tell users when they’ve violated its policies. OpenAI told TechCrunch this was purely a cosmetic change, with no change to the model’s outputs.
The company seems to want ChatGPT to feel less censored for users.
It wouldn’t be surprising if OpenAI was also trying to impress the new Trump administration with this policy update, notes former OpenAI policy leader Miles Brundage in a post on X.
The Greeks of antiquity were remarkable not only for being the first great thinkers, but also for the depth of their thinking. In the cruel world of antiquity where living itself was a struggle, they contemplated the unity of man and his relationship with others of his species. This manner of deep thinking is vividly demonstrated in Platos’ dialogs, specifically in The Protagoras.
Plato, in the Protagoras, uses the famous sophist of that name to explain how man was given the skills he needed to survive in the world. One of them, virtue, must be taught because it does not come easily to human beings.
Trump has previously targeted Silicon Valley companies, such as Twitter and Meta, for having active content moderation teams that tend to shut out conservative voices.
OpenAI may be trying to get out in front of that. But there’s also a larger shift going on in Silicon Valley and the AI world about the role of content moderation.
Schulman isn’t alone. “I think OpenAI is right to push in the direction of more speech,” said Dean Ball, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, in an interview with TechCrunch. “As AI models become smarter and more vital to the way people learn about the world, these decisions just become more important.”
In previous years, AI model providers have tried to stop their AI chatbots from answering questions that might lead to “unsafe” answers. Almost every AI company stopped their AI chatbot from answering questions about the 2024 election for U.S. president. This was widely considered a safe and responsible decision at the time.
Thus did Epimetheus, who, not being very wise, forgot that he had distributed among the brute animals all the qualities which he had to give-and when he came to man, who was still unprovided, he was terribly perplexed. Now while he was in this perplexity, Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he found that the other animals were suitably furnished, but that man alone was naked and shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms of defense.
The appointed hour was approaching when man in his turn was to go forth into the light of day; and Prometheus, not knowing how he could devise his salvation, stole the mechanical arts of Hephaestus and Athena, and fire with them and gave them to man. Thus man had the wisdom necessary to the support of life, but political wisdom he had not…
Last week, Mistral used the AI Action Summit to demonstrate that it’s getting serious about business. While the company has already raised large amounts of money from international investors, many of its foreign backers are based in the U.S. — investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Salesforce Ventures.
Due to the shifting geopolitical landscape, Mistral could potentially welcome Middle Eastern investors in its upcoming funding round. It would be a way to raise more money to remain relevant in the AI race on a technical level, while positioning itself as the international alternative to U.S. and Chinese AI companies. Mistral’s newest model, Saba, could therefore contribute to that potential fundraising effort.
Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at first the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he alone was of their kindred; and he would raise altars and images of them. He was not long in inventing articulate speech and names; and he also constructed houses and clothes and shoes and beds, and drew sustenance from the earth. Thus provided, mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were no cities.
Mistral Saba is accessible through Mistral’s API. It can also be deployed on-premise, which could be a strong selling point for companies working in sensitive industries, such as energy, finance or healthcare.
Due to the company’s European roots, since the release of the original open-weight Mistral 7B model it has often reiterated that it takes multi-language support seriously. Saba’s release is a continuation of that positioning. And Mistral said that it will be turning its attention to other regional languages down the road.
But the consequence was that they were destroyed by the wild beasts, for they were utterly weak in comparison of them, and their art was only sufficient to provide them with the means of life, and did not enable them to carry on war against the animals: food they had, but not as yet the art of government, of which the art of war is a part. After a while the desire of self-preservation gathered them into cities; but when they were gathered together, having no art of government, they evil entreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion and destruction.
California-based Olyn — founded by Ana Maria Jipa, Jeremias Buireo, Kiran Thomas, and Malcolm Wood — allows filmmakers to retain up to 90% of their revenue while giving audiences access to a streaming experience. Instead of films being sold to platforms like Netflix, the model hinges on the marketing budget of the filmmakers themselves, combined with influencers, film critics, and content creators acting as distribution partners by embedding purchase links within their content, blogs, and social channels.
This peer-to-peer approach does away with the platform as a middleman and turns movie distribution into more of an e-commerce-style engagement.
Perry Trevers, a producer at Studio POW, which used Olyn to distribute “Midas Man,” sees the platform as a helpful step in the right direction. “Olyn has enabled us to think beyond traditional platforms, letting us become our own streaming service […] It’s about empowering filmmakers to market and distribute films in a way that mirrors the direct-to-consumer success of e-commerce […] It’s a chance to retain control over our work and redefine how movies reach their viewers,” he said in a statement.
And this is the reason, Socrates, why the Athenians and mankind in general, when the question relates to carpentering or any other mechanical art, allow but a few to share in their deliberations; and when anyone else interferes, then, as you say, they object, if he be not of the favored few; which, as I reply, is very natural. But when they meet to deliberate about political virtue, which proceeds only by way of justice and wisdom, they are patient enough of any man who speaks of them, as is also natural, because they think that every man ought to share in this sort of virtue, and that states could not exist if this were otherwise…
And that you may not suppose yourself to be deceived in thinking that all men regard every man as having a share of justice or honesty and of every other political virtue, let me give you a further proof, which is this. In other cases, as you are aware, if a man says that he is a good flute-player, or skilful in any other art in which he has no skill, people either laugh at him or are angry with him, and his relations think that he is mad and go and admonish him; but when honesty is in question, or some other political virtue, even if they know that he is dishonest,
!summarize #shermansmarch #atlanta #civilwar #war #history
!summarize #nissan #automotive #honda #bankruptcy
“We are primarily focusing on utilizing the large investments in terrestrial solar for space, which has tremendous value for space,” said Peter Toth chief executive officer and co-founder of Extraterrestrial Power.
“Importantly, we are only utilizing technologies that allow high throughput manufacturing, which enables satellites being manufactured in high volumes necessary for low earth orbit (LEO) constellations,” he added.
The company first demonstrated its solar cells on Caltech’s space-based solar power experiment in 2023. This experiment made history by wirelessly transmitting power in space and beaming it to Earth for the first time.
!summarize #solar #energy #panel #space
That was shortly followed in 2024 when the cells took a ride-share on Waratah Seed. The New South Wales government supported this mission with various cutting-edge technologies on board.
Making solar cells in space
“Since thin solar cells use less materials, but we still need to maintain high efficiencies, they will have applications on Earth for lightweight usage initially—and wider uses later,” Toth explained.
!summarize #shenzhen #china #technology #future #city
Next-gen smart cars with advanced AI capabilities
Recently, the Chinese EV maker made headlines by partnering with artificial intelligence company DeepSeek to integrate its R1 LLM model with the next generation of smart cars.
The automaker will now conduct distillation training on its Xingrui car control FunctionCall AI model using DeepSeek’s R1, enhancing the smaller model’s performance by leveraging outputs from a more advanced AI system.
!summarize #disney #entertainment #dei #bobiger
!summarize #universe #science #physics
!summarize #space #universe #laser #exploration #gravitation #quantum #wave
!summarize #france #worldwar2 #history #hitler #germany
!summarize #yale #economist #china #unitedstates #stephenroach
!summarize #quantumbit #quantum #physics #science
!summarize #marcorubio #israel #unitedstates #geopolitics #politics
!summarize #marcorubio #israel #geopolitics #politics #unitedstates
!summarize #israel #hamas #ceasefire #war #hostages
!summarize #josephfirmage #usweb #history #fraud #wallstreet #internet
More hands mean more work and more increase. If your heart within you desires wealth, do these things and work with work upon work.
[405] First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox for the plow—a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen as well—and make everything ready at home, so that you may not have to ask of another, and he refuse you, and so, because you are in lack, the season pass by and your work come to nothing.
Then remember to hew your timber: it is the season for that work. Cut a mortar three feet wide and a pestle three cubits long, and an axle of seven feet, for it will do very well so; [425] but if you make it eight feet long, you can cut a beetle from it as well. Cut a felloe (wagon wheel) three spans across for a wagon of ten palms' width.
Still, tech bosses largely agreed that even though DeepSeek's breakthrough shows China being further along in the global AI race than previously thought, the threat it poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.
'The game is on'
DeepSeek says that its new R1 model, an open-source reasoning model, was able to rival the performance of OpenAI's own similar o1 model — only using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.
"The competition is afoot with China," Hoffman said, adding that DeepSeek's R1 is "a credible, actionable model."
Abishur Prakash, founder of strategic advisory firm The Geopolitical Business, told CNBC that DeepSeek shows the West's understanding of China remains limited.
A report from semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis last month estimated that DeepSeek's hardware expenditure is "well higher" than $500 million over the company's history. DeepSeek was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The report found that DeepSeek's research and development costs and expenses related to ownership are significant and that generating "synthetic data" for the model to train on would require "considerable amount of compute."
Some technologists believe that DeepSeek may have been able to achieve such a high level of performance by training its models on larger U.S. AI systems.
This technique, known as "distillation," involves having more powerful AI models evaluate the quality of answers being generated by a newer model.
It's a claim that OpenAI itself has alluded to, telling CNBC in a statement last month that it's reviewing reports that DeepSeek may have "inappropriately" used output data from its models to develop its AI model, a method referred to as "distillation."
'Life-Threatening Cold' Polar Vortex Dips Into US
After winter storms pummeled the eastern U.S. over the weekend, harsh weather moved west Monday as a polar vortex was expected to grip the Rockies and the northern plains.
Harsh weather moved west Monday as a polar vortex was expected to grip the Rockies and the northern Plains after winter storms pummeled the eastern U.S. over the weekend, killing at least 10 people, including nine victims in Kentucky who died during flooding from heavy rains.
The National Weather Service warned of "life-threatening cold" into Tuesday, with temperatures in northeastern Montana predicted to dip as low as 45 degrees below zero (-42.7 degrees Celsius) with wind chills down to 60 below (-51 degrees Celsius).
"The effects will continue for awhile, a lot of swollen streams and a lot of flooding going on," Oravec said Sunday.
In Alabama, the weather service in Birmingham said it had confirmed an EF-1 tornado touched down in Hale County. Storms there and elsewhere in the state destroyed or damaged a handful of mobile homes, downed trees and toppled power lines, but no injuries were immediately reported.
A state of emergency was declared for parts of Obion County, Tennessee, after a levee failed on Saturday, flooding the small community of Rives, home to around 300 people in the western part of the state. "There will be mandatory evacuations in effect for the residents in Rives due to the rising water, no electricity, and freezing temperatures creating a life-threatening situation," Mayor Steve Carr said in a statement Sunday.
The Bronze Age in Europe began in 3000 B.C. and gave way to the Iron Age circa 1100 B.C. While the overlap of these ages occurred at different times in different places, Greece was true to the 1100 B.C. date as it began the transition to iron manufacturing and the replacement of bronze.
In Atlanta, a person was killed when a large tree fell on a home early Sunday, according to Atlanta Fire Rescue Capt. Scott Powell.
Dangerously cold wind chill temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero (minus 45.6) were expected in most of North Dakota, which remained under an "extreme cold warning" along with large swaths of South Dakota and Minnesota, according to the weather service.
Water submerged cars and buildings in Kentucky and mudslides blocked roads in Virginia over the weekend. Flood warnings extended throughout Tennessee and Arkansas.
We begin our study by examining the technical details of iron making because they shed light on how iron processing developed and paved the way for the practical use of the metal. Although the first iron used by man came from meteorites, wrought iron was the first class of iron manufactured, perhaps as early as the second millennium B.C. Wrought iron proved inadequate for general use because slag embedded in the metal prevented it from being sufficiently hardened.
To produce high quality iron, the blacksmiths of antiquity had to learn carburization (getting carbon into the iron), quenching, and tempering (strengthening through hammering). Their experience with bronze was no help because bronze production is very different and only requires hammering. The ancient smiths could produce fires that were hot enough, but it was not until they started using charcoal that they noticed carbon being taken into the metal. Quenching and tempering is a more complicated process because you have to know when the metal is ready to hammer and when to apply heat a second time.
The mother and child were swept away Saturday night in Kentucky’s Bonnieville community, Hart County Coroner Tony Roberts said. In southeastern Kentucky, a 73-year-old man was found dead in floodwaters in Clay County, county Emergency Management Deputy Director Revelle Berry said. There were a total of four deaths in Hart County, Beshear said.
The Kentucky River Medical Center in the city of Jackson said it had closed its emergency department and transferred all patients to two other hospitals in the region due to a nearby river flooding.
High winds brought down trees and power poles across Albermarle County, Virginia. The Charlottesville Police Department said Sunday on social media that officers’ response times could be delayed due to "an overwhelming number of weather-related calls for service." Police urged residents to stay off the roads.
Once the Greeks discovered carburization, they were able to produce thin carburized products (swords). For thicker uses (axes), they had to layer together a series of thin pieces of iron to overcome the problem of getting carbon into thick pieces of the metal.
Quenching is mentioned in the Odyssey, so much of the iron manufacturing technique had evolved by the time of Homer, but the timeline of the development of the full process remains obscure. Using iron artifacts for dating is difficult because the climate of the Greek Peninsula corrodes most examples beyond identification.
There is evidence of Minoan and Mycenaean iron working, but only at the tail end of the Mycenaean efforts do we see a link to what the Greeks would accomplish later. Examples of these early efforts are knives that have their handles attached with bronze rivets. Unfortunately, the sub-Mycenaean period yields little in the way of iron objects.
Power outages were reported along much of the eastern seaboard, from New York south to Georgia.
In West Virginia, 13 southern counties were under a state of emergency for flooding and some areas were cut off to vehicle traffic Sunday. Several volunteer fire departments dealt with flooding in their own buildings while answering rescue and evacuation calls.
Ice and snow made road travel treacherous in large swaths of Michigan, which remained under a winter weather advisory until Monday afternoon. Michigan State Police reported 114 crashes Sunday around the Detroit area since snow started falling Saturday.
It’s is not until the beginning of the Proto-geometric Period that we begin to see significant iron in Attica. These objects date from the middle of the eleventh century.
During the early, middle, and late Geometric periods (ending in 700 B.C.) we see a combination or iron and bronze metalwork in graves. Iron dominates as the metal of weaponry. The reason for this is that iron is 12% lighter than bronze and able to hold its sharpness longer, making it the metal of choice for swords and spears.
Also in Colorado, three state patrol cruisers that had pulled over along roadsides were struck by other vehicles, including one on Sunday where a trooper had stopped as officials prepared to close a road because of ice. In each case the troopers were out of their cruisers at the time and were uninjured.
Avalanche warnings were issued for numerous areas of the Rocky Mountains stretching from Colorado to Washington state, with the danger rated highest in Utah.
Measuring the hardness of ancient objects tells us about the quality of the technique and the relative value of the materials. Copper has a Brinell (hardness) value of 35. Mix it with 10% tin produces a bronze alloy with a hardness of 88. Wrought iron is about 100 and modern steel is 100-150 before forging and 246 after. If you hammer the bronze alloy you can drive the hardness to 228, proving that bronze was adequate in hardness when compared to iron. Two Egyptian iron knives have been discovered, air dried and not quenched, with a hardness of 302 – a stunning example of craftsmanship.
The new Model Spec doesn’t mean that ChatGPT is a total free-for-all now. The chatbot will still refuse to answer certain objectionable questions or respond in a way that supports blatant falsehoods.
These changes could be seen as a response to conservative criticism about ChatGPT’s safeguards, which have always seemed to skew center-left. However, an OpenAI spokesperson rejects the idea that it was making changes to appease the Trump administration.
In the end, there were two main difficulties with transitioning completely from bronze to iron in Greece. In the first place the process of making iron products continued to be very technical and the number of smiths with mastery over it were relatively small. Secondly, many items made of bronze were cast in molds – a process that could not be performed in iron until centuries later. The iron making skill varied by geography and some locations were decades behind others in developing the craft, probably due to the lack of skilled smiths.
Nevertheless, OpenAI now says it’s doubling down on free speech. This week, the company even removed warnings from ChatGPT that tell users when they’ve violated its policies. OpenAI told TechCrunch this was purely a cosmetic change, with no change to the model’s outputs.
The company seems to want ChatGPT to feel less censored for users.
It wouldn’t be surprising if OpenAI was also trying to impress the new Trump administration with this policy update, notes former OpenAI policy leader Miles Brundage in a post on X.
The Greeks of antiquity were remarkable not only for being the first great thinkers, but also for the depth of their thinking. In the cruel world of antiquity where living itself was a struggle, they contemplated the unity of man and his relationship with others of his species. This manner of deep thinking is vividly demonstrated in Platos’ dialogs, specifically in The Protagoras.
Plato, in the Protagoras, uses the famous sophist of that name to explain how man was given the skills he needed to survive in the world. One of them, virtue, must be taught because it does not come easily to human beings.
Trump has previously targeted Silicon Valley companies, such as Twitter and Meta, for having active content moderation teams that tend to shut out conservative voices.
OpenAI may be trying to get out in front of that. But there’s also a larger shift going on in Silicon Valley and the AI world about the role of content moderation.
Schulman isn’t alone. “I think OpenAI is right to push in the direction of more speech,” said Dean Ball, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, in an interview with TechCrunch. “As AI models become smarter and more vital to the way people learn about the world, these decisions just become more important.”
In previous years, AI model providers have tried to stop their AI chatbots from answering questions that might lead to “unsafe” answers. Almost every AI company stopped their AI chatbot from answering questions about the 2024 election for U.S. president. This was widely considered a safe and responsible decision at the time.
Thus did Epimetheus, who, not being very wise, forgot that he had distributed among the brute animals all the qualities which he had to give-and when he came to man, who was still unprovided, he was terribly perplexed. Now while he was in this perplexity, Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he found that the other animals were suitably furnished, but that man alone was naked and shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms of defense.
The appointed hour was approaching when man in his turn was to go forth into the light of day; and Prometheus, not knowing how he could devise his salvation, stole the mechanical arts of Hephaestus and Athena, and fire with them and gave them to man. Thus man had the wisdom necessary to the support of life, but political wisdom he had not…
Last week, Mistral used the AI Action Summit to demonstrate that it’s getting serious about business. While the company has already raised large amounts of money from international investors, many of its foreign backers are based in the U.S. — investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Salesforce Ventures.
Due to the shifting geopolitical landscape, Mistral could potentially welcome Middle Eastern investors in its upcoming funding round. It would be a way to raise more money to remain relevant in the AI race on a technical level, while positioning itself as the international alternative to U.S. and Chinese AI companies. Mistral’s newest model, Saba, could therefore contribute to that potential fundraising effort.
Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at first the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he alone was of their kindred; and he would raise altars and images of them. He was not long in inventing articulate speech and names; and he also constructed houses and clothes and shoes and beds, and drew sustenance from the earth. Thus provided, mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were no cities.
Mistral Saba is accessible through Mistral’s API. It can also be deployed on-premise, which could be a strong selling point for companies working in sensitive industries, such as energy, finance or healthcare.
Due to the company’s European roots, since the release of the original open-weight Mistral 7B model it has often reiterated that it takes multi-language support seriously. Saba’s release is a continuation of that positioning. And Mistral said that it will be turning its attention to other regional languages down the road.
But the consequence was that they were destroyed by the wild beasts, for they were utterly weak in comparison of them, and their art was only sufficient to provide them with the means of life, and did not enable them to carry on war against the animals: food they had, but not as yet the art of government, of which the art of war is a part. After a while the desire of self-preservation gathered them into cities; but when they were gathered together, having no art of government, they evil entreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion and destruction.
California-based Olyn — founded by Ana Maria Jipa, Jeremias Buireo, Kiran Thomas, and Malcolm Wood — allows filmmakers to retain up to 90% of their revenue while giving audiences access to a streaming experience. Instead of films being sold to platforms like Netflix, the model hinges on the marketing budget of the filmmakers themselves, combined with influencers, film critics, and content creators acting as distribution partners by embedding purchase links within their content, blogs, and social channels.
This peer-to-peer approach does away with the platform as a middleman and turns movie distribution into more of an e-commerce-style engagement.
Perry Trevers, a producer at Studio POW, which used Olyn to distribute “Midas Man,” sees the platform as a helpful step in the right direction. “Olyn has enabled us to think beyond traditional platforms, letting us become our own streaming service […] It’s about empowering filmmakers to market and distribute films in a way that mirrors the direct-to-consumer success of e-commerce […] It’s a chance to retain control over our work and redefine how movies reach their viewers,” he said in a statement.
And this is the reason, Socrates, why the Athenians and mankind in general, when the question relates to carpentering or any other mechanical art, allow but a few to share in their deliberations; and when anyone else interferes, then, as you say, they object, if he be not of the favored few; which, as I reply, is very natural. But when they meet to deliberate about political virtue, which proceeds only by way of justice and wisdom, they are patient enough of any man who speaks of them, as is also natural, because they think that every man ought to share in this sort of virtue, and that states could not exist if this were otherwise…
And that you may not suppose yourself to be deceived in thinking that all men regard every man as having a share of justice or honesty and of every other political virtue, let me give you a further proof, which is this. In other cases, as you are aware, if a man says that he is a good flute-player, or skilful in any other art in which he has no skill, people either laugh at him or are angry with him, and his relations think that he is mad and go and admonish him; but when honesty is in question, or some other political virtue, even if they know that he is dishonest,