"This might be the last time that an AI is better than Grok," Musk said at the time, adding that it was trained on "a lot of synthetic data," and was capable of reflecting upon its mistakes to achieve logical consistency.
The xAI team claimed that an early iteration of Grok 3 had been given better ratings than existing competitors on Chatbot Arena, a crowdsourced website that pits different AI models against each other in blind tests.
Toward the end of the product demo, Musk said that the company will keep improving the model.
In the last few posts, we have been discussing the Lycurgan reforms and their impact on the Spartan society – both from the standpoint of the army and changes in the social structure. We have talked about the pressure generated by the peculiar form of government that was forced on the Spartan people. Like any new political innovation, the Lycurgan reforms went through a cycle from introduction. to maturity, and then degradation until they were no longer effective.
I thought it would be interesting to examine how the army degraded over time, using information we have about its composition and performance in battle as data points.
"We should emphasize that this is kind of a beta, meaning that you should expect some imperfections at first, but we will improve it rapidly, almost every day," he said, adding that the voice assistance for the model would be released at a later time.
Intense competition
Musk, who has been quite vocal about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, started xAI in 2023 entering the generative AI market that includes OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Our time span will be 108 years, starting with the Battle of Platea in 479 B.C. and ending with the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. I chose Platea because it is a milestone victory for the Spartans – one where they were fully deployed, engaged, and victorious. The Spartans fielded 10,000 hoplites (5,000 Spartiates and 5,000 Periokoi) out of the allied total of 38,000. At Platea, the Spartans unquestionably showed their superior military skill.
Leuctra stands at the opposite end of the spectrum. Here the Spartans could only field 700 Spartiates, losing 400 of them during the battle. Leuctra was the end of the Spartan army as an effective fighting force.
In September last year, OpenAI launched its most advanced model, the o1, which came with reasoning abilities and was able to solve relatively complex science, coding and math tasks.
Musk, along with Sam Altman, helped create OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015.
However, in recent years Musk and OpenAI's leadership have been feuding. Musk recently led an investor group that submitted a proposal to buy the AI startup's nonprofit parent for $97.4 billion — an offer OpenAI declined.
We are going to look at the ways the Spartan army changed between these two dates – we know that the number of Spartiates decreased and the number of Periokoi increased, but how did these changes occur over time? The desperately small group of Spartiates at Leuctra stands as a negation of the philosophy of the agoge and the ideals of the Lycurgan system.
In reviewing the battles between these two dates, I was struck by a couple of things: there weren’t that many battles that really mattered – that is battles that changed the course of a war or are celebrated in history like Themopylae and Platea. More amazingly, when you look at the chronology of the Peloponnesean War, its military rhythm is a mess. There were a few important battles (e.g. Mantinea), but the rest of the war featured avoidance, internal dissention, obfuscation, signing of treaties, and burning of crops. The Athenians wasted their time in Syracuse and the peace of Nicias spanned six of the twenty-seven years.
Last month, Chinese start-up DeepSeek shocked the AI market when it released a technical paper that claimed one of its open source models was able to rival the performance of OpenAI's o1 model despite using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.
It accomplished the feat in the face of the U.S. restricting leading AI chipmaker Nvidia from selling its cutting-edge GPUs — used for training AI models — to China.
I have identified four battles during our span that are significant: Tanagra in 457 B.C, Mantinea in 418 B.C, Nemea River in 394 B.C, and Coronea that same year. Tanagra was part of a war between Sparta and Athens, Mantinea, the Peloponnesean War, and the other two took place during the Corinthian War. Let’s look at these four and see what they tell us.
XAI has a "Colossus supercomputer," for training AI, which it said last year was utilizing a cluster of 100,000 advanced Nvidia GPUs for AI training. On Tuesday, the company revealed that it doubled the size of its GPU cluster for the training of Grok 3.
While many AI and tech experts have told CNBC that DeepSeek has intensified AI competition, showing what can be done with less advanced technology, others are more skeptical about its impact.
However, in China, Huawei's market share grew to 17% in 2024 from 12% the year before, according to the IDC, thanks to a comeback that began late in 2023 when it released a smartphone containing a fairly advanced chip. The component surprised many because U.S. sanctions over the past few years have sought to cut China's access to advanced semiconductor technology.
Huawei is hoping to bring that momentum to its overseas market, focusing on high-end devices.
Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at IDC, told CNBC that the the Mate XT will not be sold in large volumes and is likely aimed at those wanting to show off that they can afford such a pricey device.
Tanagra came about when the Phocians made war on the city of Doris--the traditional homeland of Doric Greeks. Sparta sent a relief force under the command of Nicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, acting as regent for his under-age nephew, King Pleistoanax. An army of 1,500 Spartan hoplites (half Periokoi?) with 10,000 of their allies entered Boeotia to compel the submission of Phocis. Their opponents had a combined force of 14,000. The battle ended up a draw and the Spartans went home. We can see the effect of the earthquake on the number of available Spartiates by comparing the numbers with Platea. I am surprised that the Spartans ventured out at a time so close to the earthquake (8 years before). They must have been comforted by the large number of allies willing to go to war with them. We know that the Spartiate contingent consisted of men up to age 45 at Platea, so one may assume the same here (the facts are unknown). The Periokoi would probably have used the same age group.
"I think what they [Huawei] believe that the trifold can be a unique value proposition and because it is very expensive, they aim to target wealthy individuals who are more keen on showing off they have the money versus having the best experience you can get," Jeronimo said.
Still, even if Huawei were to sell half a million units of the Mate XT, it could generate $1.5 billion in revenue, Jeronimo added.
The Mate XT will be a test of Huawei's appeal outside of China. For one, it will not be using Google's Android operating system, which is the most popular in the world.
At Mantinea, the Spartan hoplites numbered 4,632 (28xPentecostys@144 men + 600 Skiratai) according to Thucydides. These were 60% Periokoi and 40% Spartiate. In addition, the Spartiates included those up to age 55. The Battle of Mantinea was the largest land battle fought within Greece during the Peloponnesian War. The Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia. The result was a complete victory for the Spartans, who rescued their city from the brink of strategic defeat.
Nemea was a battle in the Corinthian War, between Sparta and the allied cities of Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. The battle was fought in Corinthian territory, at the dry bed of the Nemea River. The battle was a decisive Spartan victory, which, coupled with the Battle of Coronea later in the same year, gave Sparta the advantage in the early fighting on the Greek mainland. At Nemea, there were about 6,000 hoplites at 60% Periokoi strength. Still 2,400 Spartiates versus 1,600 at Mantinea. One assumes the hoplite disposition at Coronea was the same as Nemea.
While users of Android phones can access millions of apps via the Google Play Store, Huawei's app store does not offer some of the most popular Google apps that people outside of China rely on, which could hamper the Mate XT's appeal.
"Lack of Google still is a 'gaping hole' for mainstream international market especially those who will pay top dollar for a tri-fold hardware but which want to run Netflix or Google's Play Store or the latest cutting edge GenAI Google Gemini features," Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
Gemini is Google's artificial intelligence chatbot.
Thirteen years after Coronea came the Battle of Leuctra. There were 700 Spartiates participating, including 300 in the king’s guard. The entire guard was wiped out along with 100 other Spartiates. At Leuctra, the ratio of Spartiates to non-Spartiates was one to five. Hardly a demonstration of the power of the agoge.
One might ask why more Periokoi were not used to bring up the strength of the Spartan army at various points There are two answers to that question. In the first place the Periokoi were the citizens of a hundred small towns in the Spartan territory and did not have a large supply of men over the whole time period. Secondly, the Spartans had to include a minimum number of their own hoplites to insure the they were fielding a “Spartan” army that would make the best trained hoplites available.
Grok 3 is a family of models, to be precise. A smaller version of Grok 3, Grok 3 mini, responds to questions more quickly at the cost of some accuracy. Not all the models and related features of Grok 3 are available yet (some are in beta), but they began rolling out on Monday.
xAI claims Grok 3 beats GPT-4o on benchmarks including AIME (which evaluates a model’s performance on a sampling of math questions) and GPQA (which assesses models using PhD-level physics, biology, and chemistry problems). An early version of Grok 3 also scored competitively in Chatbot Arena, a crowdsourced test that pits different AI models against each other and has users vote on their preferred responses, according to xAI.
One sees how the Spartan army was always dependent on its neighbors for fighting strength (Periokoi and allies). It’s easy to forget that Spartiates came from the combined town of Sparta which was not very large. When you factor in the use of Spartiates for other purposes, like occupation and administration of conquered territories, and the necessity to keep some of the fighting strength in reserve, the final number eligible for battle at any one time was quite small.
This review shows us a shortage of Spartiates after the earthquake, growing to a larger number by Mantinea, and then back down by Leuctra. It is surprising to me that Sparta was willing to take on so many in the Peloponnesean War. Maybe mistrust of Athens was the motivator that overcame Sparta’s concerns about the size of its army. Of course, the trump card was the Peloponnesean League, which extended the military strength of the Spartan nation.
“Owl” is a common term for the Drachma, the most well known silver coin of ancient Athens. This coin generally had an image of Athena of the Obverse and an Owl on the reverse. There was a saying in ancient Athens about “taking owls to Athens”, meaning being redundant, like the English would say “taking coals to Newcastle”.
Once the treaty was signed between Sparta and Athens ending the Peloponnesean War, the owls invaded Sparta as gold and silver currency was transferred to the victors. The result of this seemingly small event would prove to be calamitous for the Spartans.
As Aristotle said:
“A people trained consummately but exclusively for warlike contact with its neighbors found itself suddenly compelled, by the outcome of one particular war, to enter into non-military relations for which they were not only unprepared but were positively unfitted by their peculiar institutions and habits. Those peculiarities which the Spartans had developed in order to grapple with a previous problem, and which had given them superhuman strength within the limits of the narrow environment within which their lines had previously been cast, now took their revenge upon this peculiar people by making them inhumanly or infra-humanly incompetent to live in the wider world into which the fortunes of war had eventually carried them.”
Tracy Rouch, a spokesperson for Lee Enterprises, did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
Lee is one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States, and provides publishing and website services to 72 publications across the country.
Lee notified affected media outlets on February 3 that one of its data centers that hosts applications and services used by Lee and its customers, including its services for paying subscribers, was “down,” according to an email sent by Lee CEO Kevin Mowbray that TechCrunch has seen.
Other Lee publications display website messages that they are “currently undergoing maintenance on some services, which may temporarily affect access to subscription accounts and the E-edition.”
The Freedom of the Press Foundation has a running list of affected outlets.
Lee said that the incident is “reasonably likely” to have a material impact on the company’s financial results.
The Spartan authorities ruled that gold and silver hoarding was legal for the state as a monopoly and illegal for individuals. This unrealistic attempt at the control of wealth failed immediately and, instead, fostered the subversive social effects that derive from a money economy in the hands of a people previously sheltered from same. The new money impacted the Spartan attitude toward control of private property and drove the upper and lower classes further apart. Where there had been only a slow concentration of wealth since the reforms began, the imbalance now accelerated.
In addition, the import of money was met with an export of Homoioi, who were sent abroad as administrators of the conquered. Now the number of Homoioi would decrease in greater numbers than those caused by attrition at home. Quoting Toynbee,
A policy that seemed logical at the time of the reforms now began to unravel, as Homoioi began to limit the size of their families or look for ways to add to their land holdings. The former was accomplished in any one of several strange ways including polyandry, wife sharing, and pederasty.
With regard to adding to land holdings, the innovations were equally clever. A Homoioi could adopt a member of another family and receive that family’s holdings or a man could marry a women who was her father’s heir because she had no brothers. Others were able to acquire land by the taking of dowries, which were apparently large in ancient Sparta.
Also, while X’s support page says a monthly subscription costs $50, the sign-up page lists a $48.40 per month price, and the check-out page is charging $40 a month.
The Spartan Government, once it realized the outcome of inaction, tried to combat this problem by offering an exemption from military service to those Homoioi with three children. A father a four was even exempted from paying taxes. How ironic that a system put in place to remove the cares of a man by giving him land would now create an undercurrent of subversive cupidity designed to avoid concern over a man dying landless.
We can now see the reasons behind the rapid decline of Homoioi from the end of the Peloponnesean War to 371 B.C. (Leuctra) when there were only 700 left.
Sparta succeeded in ending the Messenian revolt, but it took over five years to do so. She also battled Athens twice: inconclusively in 457 B.C, and more decisively in 446 B.C. when the Athenians where forced to rein in their designs on central Greece. But Sparta remained weak as we shall see from the casualty estimates.
Plutarch describes the catastrophe as follows:
“They say that a little before any motion was perceived, as young men and the boys grown up were exercising themselves together in the middle of a portico, a hare, of a sudden, started out just by them, which the young men, though all naked and daubed with oil, ran after for sport. No sooner were they gone from the place, than the gymnasium fell down upon the boys who stayed behind, and killed them all.”
If we start with the assumption that they were 9,000 Homoioi in the Spartan army and assume this to be one fourth of the population, when we add 4,000 more for Helot laborers, we arrive at 40,000 people in Sparta that day. According to Diodorus “houses collapsed from their foundations and more than twenty thousand Lacedaemonians perished.” If close to being accurate this number suggests that half the people in Sparta were killed by the earthquake.
In a recent interview with SpaceNews, Christopher Spagnoletti, chief product officer at Ursa Major, said “we believe Draper fills a gap that the United States has in its armaments and targets.”
The Trump administration is looking to fill this supposed gap with its Iron Dome initiative. In January President Trump issued an executive order calling for the Defense Department to build an “Iron Dome for America”. The name is a clear reference to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
According to Trump’s executive order, the US Iron Dome would serve as “a next-generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks.” Essentially, this system would use weapons to destroy incoming missiles during their boost phase.
The heaviest losses may have been mothers and small children who would normally be in their homes. Loss of mothers caused a chain reaction through the loss of at least two generations of births, because new daughters born after the disaster would have to grow up and raise their offspring. As far as male children goes, young sons could be replaced more quickly than those in the midst of their training, who left a hole in the army.
Two generations later was 430(?), a point where the human losses had been replaced and a steady growth in Homoioi could continue. Perhaps this is why the Spartans were now ready to fight the Athenians for control of Greece.
“It (the Messenian revolt) was so terrible an experience that it left Spartan life fast bound in misery and iron, and it sidetracked Spartan evolution into a blind alley. And since the Spartans were never able to forget what they had gone through, they were never able to relax, and never able to extricate themselves from the impasse of their post-war reaction… They lived on as the obedient humble servants of their own dominion over Messenia from that time forth evermore.”
And what of the impact of war on the balance of government? Since the Damos was made up of Homoioi, the loss of a substantial number would destroy that body and its role in balancing the other branches.
And there was still a greater Spartan nightmare than the loss of Homoioi or a Helot revolt. What would happen if a hostile foreign power would come to the aid of the Helots and fight alongside them? Argos was a likely candidate and it took the Battle of Thyrea in 544 B.C. and Sepeia in 494 B.C. to quiesce her, and allow Sparta to relax. Later, when Athens made a pact with the Helots in 425 B.C, Sparta moved with urgency to secure the peace which ended the first phase of the Peloponnesean War.
The average person may not realize this, but at the last major corporation I was at, it was a part of the culture for many people to get a note from the doctor that they are depressed and they can turn it into paid medical leave. All it takes is the doctor to adequately describe they are “observably” stressed, and they would be on paid leave for months and they would chain these back to back. People working the system at large corporations is a very real thing.
"Tien Kung," a #humanoid robot developed by the National and Local Co-built Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center, has achieved a world’s first by successfully climbing 134 outdoor stairs with 35cm-high steps, reaching the highest point of the Haizi Wall… pic.twitter.com/yUfxxHPNN6
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) February 17, 2025
Real-time perception is incorporated into Tien Kung’s movement algorithms, in contrast to previous humanoid robots that relied on pre-scanned 3D models and had trouble navigating irregular terrain. This is a breakthrough in humanoid robots by enabling smooth, collision-free multi-level stair navigation.
For humanoid robots to go from research labs to practical applications, their mobility in complicated situations must be improved. “Tien Kung”‘s technology may allow for widespread deployment in harsh environments like hilly regions, icy landscapes, and disaster relief efforts.
The adoption of the Lycurgan reforms served two purposes for the Spartan ruling class. It diffused the problem of class warfare by raising the status of the lower classes and it created a homeland army to protect the kingdom from another Messenian revolt. At the same time, in a big picture sense, the Spartans had created a stable political model which would be adopted by future Poleis. In the midst of building it, the Spartans were able to avoid the despotic political trend that swept across the region during the period of its adoption.
For example, they made it illegal for Spartans to travel abroad without the government’s permission. Outsiders could visit Sparta, but they were subject to expulsion at any time if their behavior ran counter to the government’s interests. Foreign merchandizing was discouraged by the peculiar Spartan currency which made trade extremely difficult. Previously, all of Greece used iron coins and the Spartans were compatible, but when the others moved on to precious metals, the Spartans chose to stay with their “spit” iron, which was bulky, heavy, and non-convertible. The government even treated the money with chemicals to destroy any commodity value in the iron.
Experts predict that the invention will be integrated into the National Innovation Center’s open-source ecosystem, opening the door for more extensive industrial uses and developments in humanoid robotics.
Furthering humanoid robotics
Tiangong is another humanoid robot developed by the state-backed Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, designed for advanced mobility and control.
It maintains a steady speed of 3.7 miles per hour (6 kilometers per hour) and integrates visual perception sensors, 3D vision sensors, and high-precision IMU to handle motion control challenges efficiently. The robot was unveiled in May 2024 at the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, a key hub for China’s robotics industry.
US, Russia hold first face-to-face talks on ending Ukraine war, Zelensky slams move
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed dissatisfaction with the discussions occurring without Ukraine’s involvement.
In a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy, officials from the United States and Russia announced on Tuesday their commitment to work towards ending the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as improving diplomatic and economic relations between the two nations.
This development followed talks involving U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Rubio reportedly elaborated on the broader objectives agreed upon during discussions, which included restoring staff levels at their embassies in Washington and Moscow, forming a high-level team to facilitate peace talks for Ukraine, and pursuing closer economic ties.
His remarks further exemplified the U.S. shift in stance toward Russia after years of isolating Moscow under previous administrations.
As the talks concluded, it became clear that no immediate plans were in place for a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs advisor.
Meanwhile, military hostilities continued, with Ukrainian reports of drone assaults from Russia resulting in civilian injuries and the evacuation of residential areas.
Under the contract, the Chinese firm will supply battery energy storage system (BESS) equipment to Saudi Arabia for storing electricity generated from renewable sources like solar, wind.
The equipment supplied by BYD Energy Storage will be installed at five sites in the country.
“BYD Energy Storage will supply new-generation MC Cube-T ESS that adopt its globally pioneering CTS (Cell-to-System) super-integrated technology, with a Vcts (proportion of cell volume to system volume) index exceeding 33 percent,” according to a press release.
The equipment will integrate into Saudi Arabia’s power transmission network. The companies believe the BESS will play a pivotal role in addressing challenges posed by the rising number of renewable energy generation systems, ensuring stable power supply, and meeting peak energy demands.
In the real world the rich would have their taxes raised to generate the required $ 835 billion. Then Congress would have to decide how to distribute that money through programs it would create. There would be programs for education, programs for housing, programs for food distribution, and programs for jobs. Wouldn’t those programs have to have a lot of complicated rules? How would they be managed to insure successful outcomes? Wouldn’t they be inefficient like every other bureaucracy?
"This might be the last time that an AI is better than Grok," Musk said at the time, adding that it was trained on "a lot of synthetic data," and was capable of reflecting upon its mistakes to achieve logical consistency.
The xAI team claimed that an early iteration of Grok 3 had been given better ratings than existing competitors on Chatbot Arena, a crowdsourced website that pits different AI models against each other in blind tests.
Toward the end of the product demo, Musk said that the company will keep improving the model.
In the last few posts, we have been discussing the Lycurgan reforms and their impact on the Spartan society – both from the standpoint of the army and changes in the social structure. We have talked about the pressure generated by the peculiar form of government that was forced on the Spartan people. Like any new political innovation, the Lycurgan reforms went through a cycle from introduction. to maturity, and then degradation until they were no longer effective.
I thought it would be interesting to examine how the army degraded over time, using information we have about its composition and performance in battle as data points.
"We should emphasize that this is kind of a beta, meaning that you should expect some imperfections at first, but we will improve it rapidly, almost every day," he said, adding that the voice assistance for the model would be released at a later time.
Intense competition
Musk, who has been quite vocal about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, started xAI in 2023 entering the generative AI market that includes OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Our time span will be 108 years, starting with the Battle of Platea in 479 B.C. and ending with the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. I chose Platea because it is a milestone victory for the Spartans – one where they were fully deployed, engaged, and victorious. The Spartans fielded 10,000 hoplites (5,000 Spartiates and 5,000 Periokoi) out of the allied total of 38,000. At Platea, the Spartans unquestionably showed their superior military skill.
Leuctra stands at the opposite end of the spectrum. Here the Spartans could only field 700 Spartiates, losing 400 of them during the battle. Leuctra was the end of the Spartan army as an effective fighting force.
In September last year, OpenAI launched its most advanced model, the o1, which came with reasoning abilities and was able to solve relatively complex science, coding and math tasks.
Musk, along with Sam Altman, helped create OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015.
However, in recent years Musk and OpenAI's leadership have been feuding. Musk recently led an investor group that submitted a proposal to buy the AI startup's nonprofit parent for $97.4 billion — an offer OpenAI declined.
We are going to look at the ways the Spartan army changed between these two dates – we know that the number of Spartiates decreased and the number of Periokoi increased, but how did these changes occur over time? The desperately small group of Spartiates at Leuctra stands as a negation of the philosophy of the agoge and the ideals of the Lycurgan system.
In reviewing the battles between these two dates, I was struck by a couple of things: there weren’t that many battles that really mattered – that is battles that changed the course of a war or are celebrated in history like Themopylae and Platea. More amazingly, when you look at the chronology of the Peloponnesean War, its military rhythm is a mess. There were a few important battles (e.g. Mantinea), but the rest of the war featured avoidance, internal dissention, obfuscation, signing of treaties, and burning of crops. The Athenians wasted their time in Syracuse and the peace of Nicias spanned six of the twenty-seven years.
Last month, Chinese start-up DeepSeek shocked the AI market when it released a technical paper that claimed one of its open source models was able to rival the performance of OpenAI's o1 model despite using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.
It accomplished the feat in the face of the U.S. restricting leading AI chipmaker Nvidia from selling its cutting-edge GPUs — used for training AI models — to China.
I have identified four battles during our span that are significant: Tanagra in 457 B.C, Mantinea in 418 B.C, Nemea River in 394 B.C, and Coronea that same year. Tanagra was part of a war between Sparta and Athens, Mantinea, the Peloponnesean War, and the other two took place during the Corinthian War. Let’s look at these four and see what they tell us.
!summarize #nymets #dylancease #sandiego #pitching #mlb
XAI has a "Colossus supercomputer," for training AI, which it said last year was utilizing a cluster of 100,000 advanced Nvidia GPUs for AI training. On Tuesday, the company revealed that it doubled the size of its GPU cluster for the training of Grok 3.
While many AI and tech experts have told CNBC that DeepSeek has intensified AI competition, showing what can be done with less advanced technology, others are more skeptical about its impact.
However, in China, Huawei's market share grew to 17% in 2024 from 12% the year before, according to the IDC, thanks to a comeback that began late in 2023 when it released a smartphone containing a fairly advanced chip. The component surprised many because U.S. sanctions over the past few years have sought to cut China's access to advanced semiconductor technology.
Huawei is hoping to bring that momentum to its overseas market, focusing on high-end devices.
Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at IDC, told CNBC that the the Mate XT will not be sold in large volumes and is likely aimed at those wanting to show off that they can afford such a pricey device.
Tanagra came about when the Phocians made war on the city of Doris--the traditional homeland of Doric Greeks. Sparta sent a relief force under the command of Nicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, acting as regent for his under-age nephew, King Pleistoanax. An army of 1,500 Spartan hoplites (half Periokoi?) with 10,000 of their allies entered Boeotia to compel the submission of Phocis. Their opponents had a combined force of 14,000. The battle ended up a draw and the Spartans went home. We can see the effect of the earthquake on the number of available Spartiates by comparing the numbers with Platea. I am surprised that the Spartans ventured out at a time so close to the earthquake (8 years before). They must have been comforted by the large number of allies willing to go to war with them. We know that the Spartiate contingent consisted of men up to age 45 at Platea, so one may assume the same here (the facts are unknown). The Periokoi would probably have used the same age group.
"I think what they [Huawei] believe that the trifold can be a unique value proposition and because it is very expensive, they aim to target wealthy individuals who are more keen on showing off they have the money versus having the best experience you can get," Jeronimo said.
Still, even if Huawei were to sell half a million units of the Mate XT, it could generate $1.5 billion in revenue, Jeronimo added.
The Mate XT will be a test of Huawei's appeal outside of China. For one, it will not be using Google's Android operating system, which is the most popular in the world.
At Mantinea, the Spartan hoplites numbered 4,632 (28xPentecostys@144 men + 600 Skiratai) according to Thucydides. These were 60% Periokoi and 40% Spartiate. In addition, the Spartiates included those up to age 55. The Battle of Mantinea was the largest land battle fought within Greece during the Peloponnesian War. The Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia. The result was a complete victory for the Spartans, who rescued their city from the brink of strategic defeat.
Nemea was a battle in the Corinthian War, between Sparta and the allied cities of Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. The battle was fought in Corinthian territory, at the dry bed of the Nemea River. The battle was a decisive Spartan victory, which, coupled with the Battle of Coronea later in the same year, gave Sparta the advantage in the early fighting on the Greek mainland. At Nemea, there were about 6,000 hoplites at 60% Periokoi strength. Still 2,400 Spartiates versus 1,600 at Mantinea. One assumes the hoplite disposition at Coronea was the same as Nemea.
!summarize #tesla #robotaxi #humanoid #robots #optimus
While users of Android phones can access millions of apps via the Google Play Store, Huawei's app store does not offer some of the most popular Google apps that people outside of China rely on, which could hamper the Mate XT's appeal.
"Lack of Google still is a 'gaping hole' for mainstream international market especially those who will pay top dollar for a tri-fold hardware but which want to run Netflix or Google's Play Store or the latest cutting edge GenAI Google Gemini features," Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
Gemini is Google's artificial intelligence chatbot.
!summarize #norway #ev #autmotive
!summarize #russia #peterzeihan #ukraine
Thirteen years after Coronea came the Battle of Leuctra. There were 700 Spartiates participating, including 300 in the king’s guard. The entire guard was wiped out along with 100 other Spartiates. At Leuctra, the ratio of Spartiates to non-Spartiates was one to five. Hardly a demonstration of the power of the agoge.
One might ask why more Periokoi were not used to bring up the strength of the Spartan army at various points There are two answers to that question. In the first place the Periokoi were the citizens of a hundred small towns in the Spartan territory and did not have a large supply of men over the whole time period. Secondly, the Spartans had to include a minimum number of their own hoplites to insure the they were fielding a “Spartan” army that would make the best trained hoplites available.
Grok 3 is a family of models, to be precise. A smaller version of Grok 3, Grok 3 mini, responds to questions more quickly at the cost of some accuracy. Not all the models and related features of Grok 3 are available yet (some are in beta), but they began rolling out on Monday.
xAI claims Grok 3 beats GPT-4o on benchmarks including AIME (which evaluates a model’s performance on a sampling of math questions) and GPQA (which assesses models using PhD-level physics, biology, and chemistry problems). An early version of Grok 3 also scored competitively in Chatbot Arena, a crowdsourced test that pits different AI models against each other and has users vote on their preferred responses, according to xAI.
One sees how the Spartan army was always dependent on its neighbors for fighting strength (Periokoi and allies). It’s easy to forget that Spartiates came from the combined town of Sparta which was not very large. When you factor in the use of Spartiates for other purposes, like occupation and administration of conquered territories, and the necessity to keep some of the fighting strength in reserve, the final number eligible for battle at any one time was quite small.
This review shows us a shortage of Spartiates after the earthquake, growing to a larger number by Mantinea, and then back down by Leuctra. It is surprising to me that Sparta was willing to take on so many in the Peloponnesean War. Maybe mistrust of Athens was the motivator that overcame Sparta’s concerns about the size of its army. Of course, the trump card was the Peloponnesean League, which extended the military strength of the Spartan nation.
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“Owl” is a common term for the Drachma, the most well known silver coin of ancient Athens. This coin generally had an image of Athena of the Obverse and an Owl on the reverse. There was a saying in ancient Athens about “taking owls to Athens”, meaning being redundant, like the English would say “taking coals to Newcastle”.
Once the treaty was signed between Sparta and Athens ending the Peloponnesean War, the owls invaded Sparta as gold and silver currency was transferred to the victors. The result of this seemingly small event would prove to be calamitous for the Spartans.
As Aristotle said:
“A people trained consummately but exclusively for warlike contact with its neighbors found itself suddenly compelled, by the outcome of one particular war, to enter into non-military relations for which they were not only unprepared but were positively unfitted by their peculiar institutions and habits. Those peculiarities which the Spartans had developed in order to grapple with a previous problem, and which had given them superhuman strength within the limits of the narrow environment within which their lines had previously been cast, now took their revenge upon this peculiar people by making them inhumanly or infra-humanly incompetent to live in the wider world into which the fortunes of war had eventually carried them.”
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The Spartan authorities ruled that gold and silver hoarding was legal for the state as a monopoly and illegal for individuals. This unrealistic attempt at the control of wealth failed immediately and, instead, fostered the subversive social effects that derive from a money economy in the hands of a people previously sheltered from same. The new money impacted the Spartan attitude toward control of private property and drove the upper and lower classes further apart. Where there had been only a slow concentration of wealth since the reforms began, the imbalance now accelerated.
In addition, the import of money was met with an export of Homoioi, who were sent abroad as administrators of the conquered. Now the number of Homoioi would decrease in greater numbers than those caused by attrition at home. Quoting Toynbee,
A policy that seemed logical at the time of the reforms now began to unravel, as Homoioi began to limit the size of their families or look for ways to add to their land holdings. The former was accomplished in any one of several strange ways including polyandry, wife sharing, and pederasty.
With regard to adding to land holdings, the innovations were equally clever. A Homoioi could adopt a member of another family and receive that family’s holdings or a man could marry a women who was her father’s heir because she had no brothers. Others were able to acquire land by the taking of dowries, which were apparently large in ancient Sparta.
Also, while X’s support page says a monthly subscription costs $50, the sign-up page lists a $48.40 per month price, and the check-out page is charging $40 a month.
The Spartan Government, once it realized the outcome of inaction, tried to combat this problem by offering an exemption from military service to those Homoioi with three children. A father a four was even exempted from paying taxes. How ironic that a system put in place to remove the cares of a man by giving him land would now create an undercurrent of subversive cupidity designed to avoid concern over a man dying landless.
We can now see the reasons behind the rapid decline of Homoioi from the end of the Peloponnesean War to 371 B.C. (Leuctra) when there were only 700 left.
Sparta succeeded in ending the Messenian revolt, but it took over five years to do so. She also battled Athens twice: inconclusively in 457 B.C, and more decisively in 446 B.C. when the Athenians where forced to rein in their designs on central Greece. But Sparta remained weak as we shall see from the casualty estimates.
Plutarch describes the catastrophe as follows:
“They say that a little before any motion was perceived, as young men and the boys grown up were exercising themselves together in the middle of a portico, a hare, of a sudden, started out just by them, which the young men, though all naked and daubed with oil, ran after for sport. No sooner were they gone from the place, than the gymnasium fell down upon the boys who stayed behind, and killed them all.”
If we start with the assumption that they were 9,000 Homoioi in the Spartan army and assume this to be one fourth of the population, when we add 4,000 more for Helot laborers, we arrive at 40,000 people in Sparta that day. According to Diodorus “houses collapsed from their foundations and more than twenty thousand Lacedaemonians perished.” If close to being accurate this number suggests that half the people in Sparta were killed by the earthquake.
In a recent interview with SpaceNews, Christopher Spagnoletti, chief product officer at Ursa Major, said “we believe Draper fills a gap that the United States has in its armaments and targets.”
The Trump administration is looking to fill this supposed gap with its Iron Dome initiative. In January President Trump issued an executive order calling for the Defense Department to build an “Iron Dome for America”. The name is a clear reference to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
According to Trump’s executive order, the US Iron Dome would serve as “a next-generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks.” Essentially, this system would use weapons to destroy incoming missiles during their boost phase.
The heaviest losses may have been mothers and small children who would normally be in their homes. Loss of mothers caused a chain reaction through the loss of at least two generations of births, because new daughters born after the disaster would have to grow up and raise their offspring. As far as male children goes, young sons could be replaced more quickly than those in the midst of their training, who left a hole in the army.
Two generations later was 430(?), a point where the human losses had been replaced and a steady growth in Homoioi could continue. Perhaps this is why the Spartans were now ready to fight the Athenians for control of Greece.
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“It (the Messenian revolt) was so terrible an experience that it left Spartan life fast bound in misery and iron, and it sidetracked Spartan evolution into a blind alley. And since the Spartans were never able to forget what they had gone through, they were never able to relax, and never able to extricate themselves from the impasse of their post-war reaction… They lived on as the obedient humble servants of their own dominion over Messenia from that time forth evermore.”
And what of the impact of war on the balance of government? Since the Damos was made up of Homoioi, the loss of a substantial number would destroy that body and its role in balancing the other branches.
And there was still a greater Spartan nightmare than the loss of Homoioi or a Helot revolt. What would happen if a hostile foreign power would come to the aid of the Helots and fight alongside them? Argos was a likely candidate and it took the Battle of Thyrea in 544 B.C. and Sepeia in 494 B.C. to quiesce her, and allow Sparta to relax. Later, when Athens made a pact with the Helots in 425 B.C, Sparta moved with urgency to secure the peace which ended the first phase of the Peloponnesean War.
The average person may not realize this, but at the last major corporation I was at, it was a part of the culture for many people to get a note from the doctor that they are depressed and they can turn it into paid medical leave. All it takes is the doctor to adequately describe they are “observably” stressed, and they would be on paid leave for months and they would chain these back to back. People working the system at large corporations is a very real thing.
"Tien Kung," a #humanoid robot developed by the National and Local Co-built Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center, has achieved a world’s first by successfully climbing 134 outdoor stairs with 35cm-high steps, reaching the highest point of the Haizi Wall… pic.twitter.com/yUfxxHPNN6
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) February 17, 2025
Real-time perception is incorporated into Tien Kung’s movement algorithms, in contrast to previous humanoid robots that relied on pre-scanned 3D models and had trouble navigating irregular terrain. This is a breakthrough in humanoid robots by enabling smooth, collision-free multi-level stair navigation.
For humanoid robots to go from research labs to practical applications, their mobility in complicated situations must be improved. “Tien Kung”‘s technology may allow for widespread deployment in harsh environments like hilly regions, icy landscapes, and disaster relief efforts.
The adoption of the Lycurgan reforms served two purposes for the Spartan ruling class. It diffused the problem of class warfare by raising the status of the lower classes and it created a homeland army to protect the kingdom from another Messenian revolt. At the same time, in a big picture sense, the Spartans had created a stable political model which would be adopted by future Poleis. In the midst of building it, the Spartans were able to avoid the despotic political trend that swept across the region during the period of its adoption.
For example, they made it illegal for Spartans to travel abroad without the government’s permission. Outsiders could visit Sparta, but they were subject to expulsion at any time if their behavior ran counter to the government’s interests. Foreign merchandizing was discouraged by the peculiar Spartan currency which made trade extremely difficult. Previously, all of Greece used iron coins and the Spartans were compatible, but when the others moved on to precious metals, the Spartans chose to stay with their “spit” iron, which was bulky, heavy, and non-convertible. The government even treated the money with chemicals to destroy any commodity value in the iron.
Experts predict that the invention will be integrated into the National Innovation Center’s open-source ecosystem, opening the door for more extensive industrial uses and developments in humanoid robotics.
Furthering humanoid robotics
Tiangong is another humanoid robot developed by the state-backed Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, designed for advanced mobility and control.
It maintains a steady speed of 3.7 miles per hour (6 kilometers per hour) and integrates visual perception sensors, 3D vision sensors, and high-precision IMU to handle motion control challenges efficiently. The robot was unveiled in May 2024 at the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, a key hub for China’s robotics industry.
US, Russia hold first face-to-face talks on ending Ukraine war, Zelensky slams move
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed dissatisfaction with the discussions occurring without Ukraine’s involvement.
In a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy, officials from the United States and Russia announced on Tuesday their commitment to work towards ending the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as improving diplomatic and economic relations between the two nations.
This development followed talks involving U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Rubio reportedly elaborated on the broader objectives agreed upon during discussions, which included restoring staff levels at their embassies in Washington and Moscow, forming a high-level team to facilitate peace talks for Ukraine, and pursuing closer economic ties.
His remarks further exemplified the U.S. shift in stance toward Russia after years of isolating Moscow under previous administrations.
As the talks concluded, it became clear that no immediate plans were in place for a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs advisor.
Meanwhile, military hostilities continued, with Ukrainian reports of drone assaults from Russia resulting in civilian injuries and the evacuation of residential areas.
Under the contract, the Chinese firm will supply battery energy storage system (BESS) equipment to Saudi Arabia for storing electricity generated from renewable sources like solar, wind.
The equipment supplied by BYD Energy Storage will be installed at five sites in the country.
“BYD Energy Storage will supply new-generation MC Cube-T ESS that adopt its globally pioneering CTS (Cell-to-System) super-integrated technology, with a Vcts (proportion of cell volume to system volume) index exceeding 33 percent,” according to a press release.
The equipment will integrate into Saudi Arabia’s power transmission network. The companies believe the BESS will play a pivotal role in addressing challenges posed by the rising number of renewable energy generation systems, ensuring stable power supply, and meeting peak energy demands.
This all sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?
In the real world the rich would have their taxes raised to generate the required $ 835 billion. Then Congress would have to decide how to distribute that money through programs it would create. There would be programs for education, programs for housing, programs for food distribution, and programs for jobs. Wouldn’t those programs have to have a lot of complicated rules? How would they be managed to insure successful outcomes? Wouldn’t they be inefficient like every other bureaucracy?