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From the real-motivation department: Microsoft's motivation for investing heavily and partnering with OpenAI came from a sense of falling badly behind Google, according to an internal email released Tuesday as part of the Justice Department's antitrust case against the search giant. Bloomberg: The Windows software maker's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, was "very, very worried" when he looked at the AI model-training capability gap between Alphabet's efforts and Microsoft's, he wrote in a 2019 message to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates. The exchange shows how the company's top executives privately acknowledged they lacked the infrastructure and development speed to catch up to the likes of OpenAI and Google's DeepMind.
[...] Scott, who also serves as executive vice president of artificial intelligence at Microsoft, observed that Google's search product had improved on competitive metrics because of the Alphabet company's advancements in AI. The Microsoft executive wrote that he made a mistake by dismissing some of the earlier AI efforts of its competitors. "We are multiple years behind the competition in terms of machine learning scale," Scott said in the email. Significant portions of the message, titled 'Thoughts on OpenAI,' remain redacted. Nadella endorsed Scott's email, forwarding it to Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and saying it explains "why I want us to do this."
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Third party company Dr. Wu have updated their via their
Weibo account with images of their new DW-E35 Wingman (Micromaster Scale Cyclonus). This is a new entry in Dr Wu’s Micromaster scale line, now bringing an impressive 5 cm tall rendition of Cyclonus. we also have two variants of this new mold.
DW-E35 Wingman – G1 Cyclonus deco. It doesn’t include any weapons.
DW-E35S Wingman – IDW Cyclonus deco. It includes an IDW retooled head and a sword.
DW-E35M Wingman – Shattered Glass red redeco using the DW-E35 mold and head. See all the images attached to this news post and then join to
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Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the money-talk department: The massive volumes of debt piling up around the globe forced the president of the World Economic Forum to reach back more than 200 years for a comparable period. Fortune: In an interview Sunday with CNBC at a WEF conference in Saudi Arabia, Borge Brende warned overall debt is approaching the world's total economic output. "We haven't seen this kind of debt since the Napoleonic Wars," he said. "We're getting close to 100% of global GDP in debt."
According to the International Monetary Fund last year, global public debt hit $91 trillion, or 92% of GDP, by the end of 2022. That was actually a dip from pandemic-era debt levels but remained in line with a decades-long trend higher. Data on global debt during the Napoleonic Wars, which took place in the early 1800s, is harder to come by. But for comparison, some estimates put British government debt at more than 200% of GDP by 1815.
Brende also told CNBC that governments need to take fiscal measures to reduce their debts without triggering a recession. For now, global growth is about 3.2% annually, which isn't bad, but it's also below the 4% trend growth the world had seen for decades, he said earlier in the interview. That risks a repeat of the 1970s, when growth was low for a decade, Brende added. But the world can avoid such an outcome if it continues to trade and doesn't engage in more trade wars. "Trade was the engine of growth for decades," he said.
Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Third party company Dr. Wu have shared images of the color prototypes of their new DW-E34 Wasp, DW-E34M & DW-E34G Golden Beetle (Micromaster Scale Bumblebee, Bug Bite & Goldbug) via their
Weibo account. These are new entries to Dr Wu’s Extreme Warfare line of Micromaster scale figures (between 5 and 6 cm tall). This is a very impressive and little G1 Bumblebee figure which is even smaller than previous of this line. Dr. Wu didn’t spend much time on releasing our first two variants. Read on for details.
DW-E34 Wasp – Includes 2 interchangeable heads, cartoon and toy inspired.
DW-E34M Wasp –
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the stranger-things department: LinkedIn, the professional network known for job listings and unsolicited career advice, is jumping into gaming. From a report: The platform is officially introducing a set of Wordle-style puzzle games, weeks after they were first spotted in the app. The company is starting with three games: Pinpoint, a word game where players must guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that's a bit like a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game that involves guessing a series of four-letter words and placing them in the correct order.
LinkedIn describes them as "thinking-oriented games," though the format will likely look familiar to fans of The New York Times Games app. Each game can only be played once a day, and players can share their score with friends in cute emoji-filled messages reminiscent of the "Wordle grid." The service will also keep track of "streaks," to encourage players to come back every day. Given the similarities, it shouldn't be surprising that games were developed by LinkedIn's news team, which recently hired a dedicated games editor.
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From the closer-look department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, who has said his "biological age" is roughly a decade younger than his actual one, has put forward his largely unlined face as a spokesman for the longevity movement. The 54-year-old has built his brand on the idea that aging is a treatable disease. The notion has proven so seductive that legions of acolytes follow his online postings about his research and the cocktails of supplements he consumes to stave off the inevitable. His social-media accounts are a platform for assertions that his work is pushing nearer to a fountain of youth. He claimed last year that a gene therapy invented in his Harvard lab and being developed by a company he co-founded, Life Biosciences, had reversed aging and restored vision in monkeys. "Next up: age reversal in humans," he wrote on X and Instagram.
On Feb. 29, in the eyes of many other scientists working to unlock the mysteries of aging, he went too far. Another company he co-founded, Animal Biosciences, quoted him in a press release saying that a supplement it had developed had reversed aging in dogs. Scientists who study aging can't even agree on what it means to "reverse" aging, much less how to measure it. The response was swift and harsh. The Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, a group of about 60 scientists that Sinclair co-founded and led, was hit with a cascade of resignations by members outraged by his claims. One scientist who quit referred to Sinclair on X as a "snake oil salesman." Days later, in a tense video meeting, the academy's five other board members pressed Sinclair to resign as president. He contended that the press release contained an inaccurate quote, according to people who were in the meeting, but he later stepped down.
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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the chatGPT-in-disguise department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Sunday, word began to spread on social media about a new mystery chatbot named "gpt2-chatbot" that appeared in the LMSYS Chatbot Arena. Some people speculate that it may be a secret test version of OpenAI's upcoming GPT-4.5 or GPT-5 large language model (LLM). The paid version of ChatGPT is currently powered by GPT-4 Turbo. Currently, the new model is only available for use through the Chatbot Arena website, although in a limited way. In the site's "side-by-side" arena mode where users can purposely select the model, gpt2-chatbot has a rate limit of eight queries per day -- dramatically limiting people's ability to test it in detail. [...] On Monday evening, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemingly dropped a hint by tweeting, "i do have a soft spot for gpt2." [...]
OpenAI's fingerprints seem to be all over the new bot. "I think it may well be an OpenAI stealth preview of something," AI researcher Simon Willison told Ars Technica. But what "gpt2" is exactly, he doesn't know. After surveying online speculation, it seems that no one apart from its creator knows precisely what the model is, either. Willison has uncovered the system prompt for the AI model, which claims it is based on GPT-4 and made by OpenAI. But as Willison noted in a tweet, that's no guarantee of provenance because "the goal of a system prompt is to influence the model to behave in certain ways, not to give it truthful information about itself."
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From the green-transportation department: AmiMoJo shares a report from Tech Times: China has reached a major landmark in green transportation with the launch of the world's largest fully electric container ship. Developed and manufactured by China Ocean Shipping Group (Cosco), the vessel is now operating a regular service route between Shanghai and Nanjing, aiming to reduce emissions significantly along its journey. The Greenwater 01, an all-electric container ship, is positioning itself to be a shipping industry pioneer. Equipped with a main battery exceeding 50,000 kilowatt-hours, the vessel can accommodate additional battery boxes for longer voyages. These battery boxes, each containing 1,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity and similar in size to standard 20-foot containers, provide flexibility in extending the ship's travel range. With 24 battery boxes onboard, the Greenwater 01 can complete a journey consuming 80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to saving 15 tons of fuel compared to a standard container ship, highlighting the efficiency of electric propulsion systems. According to Cosco, the vessel can reduce CO2 emissions by 2,918 tons per year, which is equivalent to taking 2,035 family cars off the road or planting 160,000 trees.
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From the combined-forces department: Satellite operator SES plans to buy fellow satellite operator Intelsat, in a $3.1 billion deal that's expected to close next year. According to Space Magazine, the combined company could help it "compete with SpaceX's huge Starlink broadband network." From the report: SES and Intelsat both operate communications satellites in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,785 kilometers) above Earth. SES also runs a constellation called O3b in medium Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 5,000 miles (8,000 km). As [SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh] noted, there is increasingly fierce competition for the services provided by these satellites -- for example, from SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. And other LEO megaconstellations are in the works as well. For instance, Amazon launched the first two prototypes for its planned 3,200-satellite Project Kuiper network this past October.
"By combining our financial strength and world-class team with that of SES, we create a more competitive, growth-oriented solutions provider in an industry going through disruptive change," Intelsat CEO David Wajsgras said in the same statement. "The combined company will be positioned to meet customers' needs around the world and exceed their expectations," he added.
Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard has been making the rounds conducting interviews since the release of Amazon’s adaptation of Fallout, one of the series he’s helped direct in his time there. 
Starfield’s next big patch, 1.11.33, is now out for PC players on Steam via the game’s beta branch. This new update, which will go live later for everyone, adds performance options to Xbox, improved maps while walking around planets, new difficulty options, and a huge list of bug fixes. 
A new update for Fallout 4, intended to improve the game, has done quite the opposite for many players. As a result, many PC users are using Steam guides and downloading mods en masse to roll back the annoying “next-gen” update, making these Fallout 4 guides and mods extremely popular. 
Stellar Blade, the Nier: Auotmata-ish PS5 character action game, has a bunch of chests to unlock that give you all kinds of sweet rewards, from healing items to gold to crafting resources. Many of these chests require that you input a sequence of buttons in an allotted time limit, while others need a passcode to open.… 
As part of a $1 billion investment in internal game development, Hasbro is working on a new game set in the G.I. Joe universe which will focus on the team’s resident ninja, Snake Eyes. The project was first revealed to be in pre-production last year and is being developed by a team made up of Batman Arkham veterans.… 
On April 29, an in-development farm sim from Cryptivo called Farm Folks shared a now-deleted post about breast jiggle physics on its official X/Twitter account that kickstarted a firestorm, emboldened gaming’s baddest actors, and wreaked havoc in the game’s official Discord. The team behind the studio has since… 
You don’t have to have ever played Magic: The Gathering to be familiar with its mythical Black Lotus: a powerful card from the game’s first set that now routinely fetches eye-popping amounts in the collectible market. But no Black Lotus, no matter how pristine or rare, has ever sold for $3 million. It’s such a… 
Batman: Arkham Shadow is a new entry in the beloved comic book metroidvania beat ‘em up series, though it’s not what many players were probably hoping for. It’s being made in VR and will be exclusive to the Meta Quest 3 headset. It’s scheduled to release in late 2024. 
I do not envy anyone working on the previously announced Legend of Zelda movie. Whereas, with Mario, they needed only make cute cartoons and load the film with jokes and easter eggs, Zelda feels so much more nuanced, and any angle is likely to displease many. Filmmaker Wes Ball has recently made it clear that his… 
Poor Weeoming.