Hidden amid its trademark satire of average American life, The Simpsons is riddled with mathematical Easter eggs. The show’s writing staff has boasted an impressive pedigree of Ivy League mathheads who couldn’t resist infusing America’s longest-running sitcom with inside jokes, scattered about like sprinkles on…
Source: io9 – Gizmodo Monday Puzzle: The Simpsons Invented This Surprisingly Tough Geometry Task
An anonymous reader shared this report from ZDNet:
At the Linux Plumbers Conference, the invite-only meeting for the top Linux kernel developers, ByteDance Linux Kernel Engineer Cong Wang, proposed that we use AI and machine learning to tune the Linux kernel for the maximum results for specific workloads… There are thousands of parameters. Even for a Linux expert, tuning them for optimal performance is a long, hard job. And, of course, different workloads require different tunings for different sets of Linux kernel parameters… What ByteDance is working on is a first attempt to automate the entire Linux kernel parameter tuning process with minimal engineering efforts.
Specifically, ByteDance is working on tuning Linux memory management. ByteDance has found that with machine learning algorithms, such as Bayesian optimization, automated tuning could even beat most Linux kernel engineers. Why? Well, the idea, as Wang wryly put it, “is not to put Linux kernel engineers out of business.” No, the goal is “to liberate human engineers from tuning performance for each individual workload. While making better decisions with historical data, which humans often struggle with. And, last, but never least, find better solutions than those we come up with using our current trial and error, heuristic methods.
In short, ByteDance’s system optimizes resource usage by making real-time adjustments to things like CPU frequency scaling and memory management.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Can AI Be Used to Fine-Tune Linux Kernel Performance?
OpenAI’s board of directors announced Friday it had fired CEO Sam Altman. But he’s doing okay. By Monday morning, he had joined Microsoft “to lead a new advanced AI research team,” according to the company.
Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk in 2015 as a nonprofit and served as the CEO for the for-profit arm since 2019. He was originally fired from OpenAI over “a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board,” according to an internal staff memo. Several key members also resigned, including co-founder Greg Brockman (who will now also join Microsoft) along with a few senior researchers. “Dozens” of OpenAI employees reportedly announced internally they’d be quitting too, with some expressing interest in joining a potential new Altman startup.
According to Bloomberg, the board had reportedly considered reversing Altman’s firing, though the ousted exec wanted the existing board to resign and issue a public apology — and I fully endorse all this drama, if true.
The company did not apologize, however.
— Mat Smith
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Apple will offer RCS support starting in 2024
Alan Wake II is great, but it doesn’t need guns
Stadium card stunts and the art of programming a crowd
The Last Of Us Part II Remastered is coming to PS5 next year
Following the news that iPhones will support Rich Communication Services next year, what exactly is RCS? Well, positioned as a next-generation replacement for SMS and MMS, it adds modern features you may already use on WhatsApp, including read receipts and the ability to send high-resolution images and more. We wrestle with what this means, and how iMessage fits into it all.
It’s a weird week for messaging and texts. Nothing has pulled the beta of its new messaging app, Nothing Chats. The company touted the Sunbird-based app as the answer to the longstanding Android versus Apple texting woes, supporting RCS and iMessage. However, critics voiced concerns over the security risks workarounds like this bring. Nothing Chats does not have end-to-end encryption, and 9to5Google noted attachments sent by other users could easily be accessed in plain text.
SpaceX’s second test flight of its Starship spacecraft — which it hopes will eventually ferry humans to the Moon and Mars — ended in an explosion Saturday morning, minutes after taking off from the company’s spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas. After completing stage separation, when the Super Heavy booster detached itself from Starship, the rocket’s first stage exploded. Starship, however, continued for several more minutes, with a faint explosion heard around the eight-minute mark. Unlike its first test, Starship was able to reach space this time. The company is framing it as a success, even if it did… explode.
We’ve rounded up the best Black Friday deals on tech we’ve tested, and we expect many of the live deals to run through to Cyber Monday. As a taster, we’re already seeing record lows on iPads, wireless earbuds, PS5 controllers, Xbox consoles, Sonos gear, smart TVs and more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-microsoft-recruits-recently-fired-openai-ceo-sam-altman-121523955.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The Morning After: Microsoft recruits recently fired OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman
Microsoft has hired OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head up a “new advanced AI research team,” the software conglomerate’s chief Satya Nadella said Monday, capping three days of intense discussions following the unexpected decision by OpenAI’s board to dismiss Altman. From a report: Many OpenAI members, including the co-founder Brockman, left the firm in protest last week. Altman will serve as the chief executive of the new AI group at Microsoft, Nadella said. “We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having you do the same.” Nadella said Altman and Brockman will be joined by “colleagues.” Former OpenAI top talent Szymon Sidor, Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry are joining Microsoft with “more” to follow suit, Brockman said in a post on X.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Hires Ex-OpenAI Leaders Altman and Brockman To Lead New AI Group
We’re only a few days out from Black Friday, and the sales keep building. The latest deal worth checking out comes courtesy of a new all-time low price on Apple’s ninth-generation iPad. The 64GB device is currently available for $230, down from $329 — a 30 percent discount.
The ninth-gen Apple iPad is a great option if you want a simple, well-performing iPad that does everything you need. It’s the cheapest option on the market (even more so now), with us naming it the best budget iPad for 2023. It first came on the scene in 2021, getting an 86 in our review thanks to updates like Apple’s A13 Bionic chip and doubling the amount of storage it has for the same price.
Apple’s 2021 iPad also has True Tone technology, changing the color based on the room’s ambient light, and has a 12MP front-facing camera. Plus, it offers up to 10 hours of battery life when watching videos, playing music or on the internet. Accessory-wise, it’s compatible with the first-gen Apple Pencil. If you want a bit of an upgrade, Apple’s tenth-generation iPad is also on sale, with a 22 percent discount dropping its price to $349 from $449.
Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-9th-gen-ipad-falls-to-a-new-low-of-230-in-early-black-friday-deal-104050480.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Apple’s 9th-gen iPad falls to a new low of 0 in early Black Friday deal
There’s been predictions that a transition to electric vehicles would hurt autoworkers. But this week U.S. autoworkers ended their strike after winning “significant gains in pay and benefits,” reports the Associated Press:
The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, that along with a similar deal with General Motors will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles…
The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028. Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers.
They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.
In October the union’s president criticized what had been the original trajectory of the auto industry. “The plan was to draw down engine and transmission plants, and permanently replace them with low-wage battery jobs. We had a different plan. And our plan is winning.”
And this week the union’s president said they had not only “raised wages dramatically for over a hundred thousand workers” — and improved their retirement security. “We took a major step towards ensuring a just transition to electric vehicles.”
In Belvidere, Illinois, the union “won a commitment from Stellantis to reopen a shuttered factory and even add an EV battery plant,” the Associated Press notes.
“The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW,” their article adds — and perhaps even for other autoworkers. After the UAW’s president announced plans to try unionizing other plants, three foreign automakers in the U.S. — Honda, Toyota and Hyundai — “quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – US Autoworkers End Strike with Pay Raises and a Chance to Unionize EV Battery Plants
In another twist on the OpenAI saga that raged over the weekend, Microsoft has swooped in and hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman just after OpenAI confirmed Altman’s firing, CEO Satya Nadella announced in a post on X. The pair, along with colleagues are joining Microsoft “to lead a new advanced AI research team.” Nadella added that Microsoft “remain[s] committed to our partnership with OpenAI,” but the move looks a giant hedge on that bet. It also means the much of OpenAI’s talent may be moving to Microsoft, which may stall the latter’s progress with its widely-used ChatGPT product.
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023
The appoint was announced just after it was suggested that Altman may return to OpenAI, following his sudden firing on Friday. That was preceded by an outpouring of support for Altman from OpenAI employees, many of whom shared hearts on social media.
In a bit of a surprising development, though, talks between the parties broke down and OpenAI subsequently said that Altman (and co-founder Greg Brockman) would not return, according to reports. Instead, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear was appointed as the new CEO.
Developing…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-snatches-sam-ultman-and-former-openai-colleagues-to-form-its-own-ai-research-team-082755226.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Microsoft snatches Sam Altman and former OpenAI colleagues to form its own AI research team
Talks over reinstating co-founder and former CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI have apparently broken down. According to The Information and Bloomberg, the board has now hired Altman’s fellow Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear as OpenAI’s new interim CEO. This appointment was apparently announced internally by co-founder and board director Ilya Sutskever.
Altman was originally fired from OpenAI over “a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board,” according to an oddly blunt internal staff memo published by Axios earlier. The news was subsequently followed by resignations from several key members, including co-founder Greg Brockman (who was ousted as the chairman of the board), along with a few senior researchers.
Developing…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sam-altman-will-not-be-returning-to-openai-062957892.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Sam Altman will not be returning to OpenAI
Sam Altman will not be returning as CEO of OpenAI, after a furious weekend of negotiations.
The Information reports:
Sam Altman won’t return as CEO of OpenAI, despite efforts by the company’s executives to bring him back, according to co-founder and board director Ilya Sutskever. After a weekend of negotiations with the board of directors that fired him Friday, as well as with its remaining leaders and top investors, Altman will not return to the startup he co-founded in 2015, Sutskever told staff. Emmett Shear, co-founder of Amazon-owned video streaming site Twitch, will take over as interim CEO, Sutskever said.
The decision “which flew in the face of comments OpenAI executives shared with staff on Saturday and early Sunday “could deepen a crisis precipitated by the board’s sudden ouster of Altman and its removal of President Greg Brockman from the board Friday. Brockman, a key engineer behind the company’s successes, resigned later that day, followed by three senior researchers, threatening to set off a broader wave of departures to OpenAI’s rivals, including Google, and to a new AI venture Altman has been plotting in the wake of his firing.
Venture capitalist Jason Calacanis predicts on X:
The employees at OpenAI just lost billions of dollars in secondary share sales that were about to happen at a $90b valuation – that’s over. Done.
I think OpenAI will lose half their employees, the 12-18 month lead, and 90% of their valuation in 2024.
Just insane value destruction
What’s your prediction for the future of OpenAI?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – OpenAI Fiasco: Emmett Shear Becomes Interim OpenAI CEO as Altman Talks Break Down
Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt has resigned. In his announcement on X, the 38-year-old exec expressed that “the last 10 years have been amazing,” while reminding us that “the startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities.” As to what Vogt is doing next, he plans on taking a break first to “explore some new ideas.” Vogt had previously co-founded video platforms Justin.tv, Twitch and Socialcam.
According to TechCrunch, General Motors has since promoted Mo Elshenawy, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Cruise, to President and CTO of its robotaxi subsidiary. No replacement has been named for the vacant CEO spot.
Today I resigned from my position as CEO of Cruise. (1/5)
— Kyle Vogt (@kvogt) November 20, 2023
Vogt’s resignation comes after General Motors installed its very own Executive Vice President of Legal and Policy (and already a Cruise board member), Craig Glidden, as Chief Administrative Officer of the autonomous vehicle firm last week. Cruise’s legal, communications and finance teams now report to Glidden.
General Motors has yet to appoint a permanent Chief Safety Officer, though with the help of an independent engineering consulting firm, it continues to conduct an expanded safety probe on the infamous freak accident. The collision on October 2 involved a female pedestrian being hit by a human driver and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi, which ended up running her over and dragging her 20 feet. Both autonomous and manual vehicle operations at Cruise continue to be suspended, affecting a fleet of 950 robotaxis.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cruises-kyle-vogt-resigns-as-ceo-of-the-robotaxi-company-041949493.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Cruise’s Kyle Vogt resigns as CEO of the robotaxi company
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:
Kyle Vogt, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led Cruise from a startup in a garage through its acquisition and ownership by General Motors, has resigned, according to an email sent to employees Sunday evening…
The executive shakeup comes a less than a month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s permits to operate self-driving vehicles on public roads after an October 2 incident that saw a pedestrian — who had been initially hit by a human-driven car and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi — run over and dragged 20 feet by the AV. A video, which TechCrunch also viewed, showed the robotaxi braking aggressively and coming to a stop over the woman. The DMV’s order of suspension stated that Cruise withheld about seven seconds of video footage, which showed the robotaxi then attempting to pull over and subsequently dragging the woman 20 feet…
[M]ore layoffs are expected at the company that employs about 4,000 full-time employees.
TechCrunch notes that Vogt previously co-founded Justin.tv Socialcam, Twitch, and shares this quote from an email that Vogt sent to all employees Sunday evening. “The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future…
“The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we’ve proven there is something far better around the corner.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Cruise’s CEO Resigns
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:
Central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cash, but adoption could take time, said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday.
“CBDCs can replace cash which is costly to distribute in island economies,” she said Wednesday at the Singapore FinTech Festival. “They can offer resilience in more advanced economies. And they can improve financial inclusion where few hold bank accounts.” […] “CBDCs would offer a safe and low-cost alternative [to cash]. They would also offer a bridge to go between private monies and a yardstick to measure their value, just like cash today which we can withdraw from our banks,” the IMF chief said.
The IMF has said that more than 100 countries are exploring CBDCs — or approximately 60% of countries in the world. “The level of global interest in CBDCs is unprecedented. Several central banks have already launched pilots or even issued a CBDC,” the IMF said in a September report. According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements, of the 86 central banks surveyed, 93% said they were exploring CBDCs, while 58% said they were likely to or may possibly issue a retail CBDC in either the short or medium term. But as of June, only 11 countries have adopted CBDCs, with an additional 53 in advanced planning stages and 46 researching the topic, according to data from the Atlantic Council…
On Wednesday, the fund launched a CBDC handbook as a reference guide for policymakers around the world…
Georgieva also said that artificial intelligence “could amplify some of the benefits of CBDCs” by providing accurate credit scoring and personalized support.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – The IMF Launches ‘Central Bank Digital Currency’ Handbook, Says CBDCs Could Someday Replace Cash
Today saw the end of IFComp.org’s 29th annual text adventure competition (now administered by the charitable non-profit IF Technology Foundation). 74 new and original text adventures
competed for a share of the $7,523 prize pool, with the winners announced in a special online ceremony on Twitch this afternoon.
After all the votes were tabulated, the winning game was Dr Ludwig and the Devil, a 90-minute epic in which an esteemed mad scientist tries to double-cross Beelzebub himself — along with “the world’s least effective torch and pitchfork-wielding mob!” Coming in second was LAKE Adventure. (Its premise? That it’s a 13-year-old’s 1993 game being revisited by its author 28 years later — complete with some gloriously retro artwork.) And finishing third was The Little Match Girl 4 (described as “a touching epic time travel fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.)
But also this week, the owner of the web site 80sNostalgia.com has created a text adventure using nothing but inter-linked posts on Threads.
“Think you can get under The Bridge?” its first post challenges. “Test your gaming skills with this Threads exclusive text-based game!
“And then try to get your head around got much work it took to make it…”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Text Adventures are Still Thriving in Interactive Fiction Competition – and On Threads
“To celebrate my life, I’ve arranged to buy up others’ medical debt and then destroy the debt,” reads a posthumous tweet posted Tuesday after the death of 38-year-old Casey McIntyre.
The Washington Post explains…
McIntyre, who served as publisher at Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House, was diagnosed in 2019 and proceeded through treatment without taking on debt, [husband Andrew Rose] Gregory told The Washington Post. But many fellow cancer patients she met were in more precarious financial positions, Gregory added. “We were both so keenly aware that Casey had great health insurance through Penguin Random House,” said Gregory, 41. “Casey had no medical debt….”
About nine months before McIntyre died, her husband came across a video online about members of a North Carolina church who purchased nearly $3.3 million of local residents’ medical debt for $15,048 in a “debt jubilee,” a historical reference to ancient stories about personal debts being canceled at regular intervals. The couple chose to make monthly donations to RIP Medical Debt, the same organization that partnered with the North Carolina churchgoers. The nonprofit organization aims to abolish medical debt “at pennies on the dollar,” according to its website. For every $100 donated, the company relieves $10,000 of medical debt. As of Saturday, nearly $200,000 had been donated to RIP Medical Debt in McIntyre’s memory, which would wipe out approximately $20 million of unpaid medical bills. [By Sunday afternoon it had risen to over $334,000…]
Allison Sesso, president and chief executive of RIP Medical Debt, said her organization found out about McIntyre’s case after McIntyre’s posthumous social media post went viral. Sesso said the pace of donations was record-setting for her charity. “What an incredible gesture to the world as you’re exiting,” Sesso told The Post. “This final act of generosity is blowing up. The amount that they’re raising and the rate at which this has gone is not something that we’re used to.”
McIntyre’s post on X has now received 65,400 likes — and 3,086 reposts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – A Viral Post on Social Media Will Clear the Medical Debt of Strangers
This week the Microsoft Security Response Center celebrated the 20th anniversary of Patch Tuesday updates.
In a blog post they call the updates “an initiative that has become a cornerstone of the IT world’s approach to cybersecurity.”
Originating from the Trustworthy Computing memo by Bill Gates in 2002, our unwavering commitment to protecting customers continues to this day and is reflected in Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative announced this month. Each month, we deliver security updates on the second Tuesday, underscoring our pledge to cyber defense. As we commemorate this milestone, it’s worth exploring the inception of Patch Tuesday and its evolution through the years, demonstrating our adaptability to new technology and emerging cyber threats…
Before this unified approach, our security updates were sporadic, posing significant challenges for IT professionals and organizations in deploying critical patches in a timely manner. Senior leaders of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) at the time spearheaded the idea of a predictable schedule for patch releases, shifting from a “ship when ready” model to a regular weekly, and eventually, monthly cadence…
This led to a shift from a “ship when ready” model to a regular weekly, and eventually, monthly cadence. In addition to consolidating patch releases into a monthly schedule, we also organized the security update release notes into a consolidated location. Prior to this change, customers had to navigate through various Knowledge Base articles, making it difficult to find the information they needed to secure themselves. Recognizing the need for clarity and convenience, we provided a comprehensive overview of monthly releases. This change was pivotal at a time when not all updates were delivered through Windows Update, and customers needed a reliable source to find essential updates for various products.
Patch Tuesday has also influenced other vendors in the software and hardware spaces, leading to a broader industry-wide practice of synchronized security updates. This collaborative approach, especially with hardware vendors such as AMD and Intel, aims to provide a united front against vulnerabilities, enhancing the overall security posture of our ecosystems. While the volume and complexity of updates have increased, so has the collaboration with the security community. Patch Tuesday has fostered better relationships with security researchers, leading to more responsible vulnerability disclosures and quicker responses to emerging threats…
As the landscape of security threats evolves, so does our strategy, but our core mission of safeguarding our customers remains unchanged.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Celebrates 20th Anniversary of ‘Patch Tuesday’
Newly ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former president Greg Brockman are meeting with executives at the company’s San Francisco headquarters now as discussions about possibly reinstating their positions continue, The Information reports. Per The Information, interim CEO Mira Murati and others have been leading the push to get Altman reinstated as CEO, and invited the two to HQ on Sunday. Altman and Brockman showed up for talks this afternoon, sources told The Information.
Around the time of the report’s publication, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wearing a guest badge for entry into the building, writing, “first and last time i ever wear one of these (sic)” — which could be interpreted several different ways, at this point. Sources told The Verge that Altman has set a 5PM PT deadline for board members to reach an agreement that could ultimately determine whether he walks away from OpenAI, or they do.
first and last time i ever wear one of these pic.twitter.com/u3iKwyWj0a
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 19, 2023
After Altman was fired without warning on Friday, Brockman stepped down in solidarity, along with a slew of senior researchers. Other staff members have reportedly pledged to resign as well and follow the two to other projects, signaling their support on social media, according to The Verge. The state of Altman’s position — and OpenAI’s future leadership — has remained up in the air this weekend as backlash against the board’s initial decision grows.
On Saturday evening, The Verge broke news that the board was considering reinstating him as CEO, and had “agreed in principle” to resign if so. But, the board reportedly couldn’t make up its collective mind in time, and missed the deadline that had been set for the decision.
According to Bloomberg, that’s at least in part because they’ve hit a brick wall in trying to agree on what the board will look and what its role will be if he’s reinstated. Altman reportedly wants the existing board gone if he’s to return, among other “governance changes” — including making former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor a board member and possibly bringing on a Microsoft executive, Bloomberg reported, though the latter has not yet made a decision.
There has been much speculation over the reason behind Altman’s removal as CEO and from the OpenAI board of directors, which came as a surprise to Altman, staff, and investors. An internal memo sent that morning to staff and seen by Axios said that the decision to unseat Altman came as the result of “a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board.” It “was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices,” the memo from COO Brad Lightcap said.
Altman was reportedly fundraising for a custom AI chip project codenamed “Tigris” prior to his unexpected firing, Bloomberg reported. Per Bloomberg and The New York Times, which previously reported on his plans for other AI ventures, Altman has already pitched the idea of custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) that would rival NVIDIA’s to potential investors in the Middle East.
Altman was also reportedly looking for backers to fund his hardware collaboration with former Apple designer, Jony Ive, for which he approached SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. Sources with knowledge of the discussions told Bloomberg that Altman is trying to raise “tens of billions of dollars” to get these projects off the ground.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sam-altman-and-greg-brockman-are-meeting-with-openai-execs-now-in-ongoing-talks-over-reinstatement-212124319.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are meeting with OpenAI execs now at HQ in ongoing talks over reinstatement
Aardman Animations has been defined by its clay animation techniques. Known as Newplast plasticine, it’s been used since the studio’s inception back in 1972, and have been used in all their productions, from the Wallace & Gromit shorts to more recent fare like Star Wars Visions and Shaun the Sheep. You know you’re…
Source: Gizmodo – Aardman Animations is Running Out of Its Iconic Clay
Amazon “is investing millions in training an ambitious large language model,” reports Reuters, “hoping it could rival top models from OpenAI and Alphabet, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.”
The model, codenamed as “Olympus”, has 2 trillion parameters, the people said, which could make it one of the largest models being trained. OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, one of the best models available, is reported to have one trillion parameters…
The team is spearheaded by Rohit Prasad, former head of Alexa, who now reports directly to CEO Andy Jass… Amazon believes having homegrown models could make its offerings more attractive on AWS, where enterprise clients want to access top-performing models, the people familiar with the matter said, adding there is no specific timeline for releasing the new model.
“While the parameter count doesn’t automatically mean Olympus will outperform GPT-4, it’s probably a good bet that it will, at minimum, be very competitive with its rival from OpenAI,” argues a financial writer at the Motley Fool — as well as Googles nascent AI projects.
Amazon could have a key advantage over its competition, one that CEO Andy Jassy alluded to in the company’s third-quarter earnings call. Jassy said, “Customers want to bring the models to their data, not the other way around. And much of that data resides in AWS [Amazon Web Services] as the clear market segment leader in cloud infrastructure….”
Amazon will likely also leverage Olympus in other ways. For example, the company could make its CodeWhisperer generative AI coding companion more powerful. Jassy noted in the Q3 call that all of Amazon’s “significant businesses are working on generative AI applications to transform their customer experiences.” Olympus could make those initiatives even more transformative.
They point out that Amazon’s profits more than tripled in the third quarter of 2023 from where they were in 2022.
And Amazon’s stock price has already jumped more than 40% in 2023.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Amazon Announces ‘Olympus’ LLM to Compete With OpenAI and Google
For years, animation studio MAPPA has been noteworthy for the quality of the anime it puts out, which includes widely beloved shonen like Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, and Jujutsu Kaisen. At the same time, it’s been noted that the 12-year-old studio has a habit of taking on a lot of projects at once, with allegations…
Source: Gizmodo – Jujutsu Kaisen Studio MAPPA is Breaking Under Crunch Allegations
This week the Linux Foundation “announced the intention to form the High Performance Software Foundation.
“Through a series of technical projects, the High Performance Software Foundation aims to build, promote, and advance a portable software stack for high performance computing by increasing adoption, lowering barriers to contribution, and supporting development efforts.”
As use of high performance computing becomes ubiquitous in scientific computing and digital engineering, and AI use cases multiply, more and more data centers deploy GPUs and other compute accelerators. The High Performance Software Foundation intends to leverage investments made by the United States Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, and other international projects in accelerated high performance computing to exploit the performance of this diversifying set of architectures. As an umbrella project under the Linux Foundation, HPSF intends to provide a neutral space for pivotal projects in the high performance software ecosystem, enabling industry, academia, and government entities to collaborate together on the scientific software stack.
The High Performance Software Foundation already benefits from strong support across the high performance computing landscape, including leading companies and organizations like Amazon Web Services, Argonne National Laboratory, CEA, CIQ, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Kitware, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NVIDIA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and the University of Oregon.
Its first open source technical projects include:
Spack: the high performance computing package managerKokkos: a performance-portable programming model for writing modern C++ applications in a hardware-agnostic way.AMReX: a performance-portable software framework designed to accelerate solving partial differential equations on block-structured, adaptively refined meshes.WarpX: a performance-portable Particle-in-Cell code with advanced algorithms that won the 2022 Gordon Bell PrizeTrilinos: a collection of reusable scientific software libraries, known in particular for linear, non-linear, and transient solvers, as well as optimization and uncertainty quantification.Apptainer: a container system and image format specifically designed for secure high-performance computing.VTK-m: a toolkit of scientific visualization algorithms for accelerator architectures.HPCToolkit: performance measurement and analysis tools for computers ranging from laptops to the world’s largest GPU-accelerated supercomputers.E4S: the Extreme-scale Scientific Software StackCharliecloud: high performance computing-tailored, lightweight, fully unprivileged container implementation.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Linux Foundation Announces Intent to Form ‘High Performance Software Foundation’