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Augmented Vertex Block Descent (AVBD)

Augmented Vertex Block Descent (AVBD) Vertex Block Descent is a fast physics-based simulation method that is unconditionally stable, highly parallelizable, and capable of converging to the implicit Euler solution. We extend it using an augmented Lagrangian formulation to address some of its fundamental limitations. First, we introduce a mechanism to handle hard constraints with infinite stiffness without introducing numerical instabilities. Second, we substantially improve the convergence in th

Delta Chat is a decentralized and secure messenger app

Delta Chat is a decentralized and secure messenger app 💬 Reliable instant messaging with multi-profile and multi-device support ⚡️ Sign up to secure fast chatmail servers or use classic e-mail servers 🥳 Interactive web apps in chats for gaming and collaboration 🔒 Audited end-to-end encryption safe against network and server attacks 👉 FOSS software, built on Internet Standards, avoiding xkcd927 :) Download Available on mobile and desktop.

​​How to Become a Backyard Naturalist With Just Your Smartphone

In the early days of summer, backyards come to life. Warmer temperatures transform spring buds into lush greenery, coax insects from their winter slumber, and invite newborn animals to explore their surroundings on wobbling legs or wings. With smartphones, documenting this emerging wildlife has never been easier. These days, all the tools you need to become a backyard naturalist fit right in the palm of your hand. And while June is an especially good time to start, you can use your phone to obs

Israel Says Iran Is Hacking Security Cameras for Spying

Amid Israeli airstrikes this week and the imminent threat of further escalations by the United States, Iran started severely limiting internet connectivity for its citizens, limiting Iranians' access to crucial information and intentionally pushing them toward domestic apps that may not be secure. Meanwhile, the Israel-tied hacking group known as Predatory Sparrow is waging cyberwar on Iran’s financial system, attacking Iran’s Sepah Bank and destroying more than $90 million in cryptocurrency hel

14 Best Office Chairs of 2025— I've Tested Nearly 60 to Pick Them

Replace Your Casters The wheels on the bottom of your chair are among the easiest parts to replace. If your current casters don't roll smoothly or are too loud, it might be worth replacing them instead of buying a whole new chair. I like these from Stealtho, a Ukrainian company. They'll work with nearly every office chair, though the company notes they don't work with Ikea chairs. The soft polyurethane material means these won't scratch or chip hardwood floors, as some plastic casters do, plus

Anthropic study: Leading AI models show up to 96% blackmail rate against executives

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Researchers at Anthropic have uncovered a disturbing pattern of behavior in artificial intelligence systems: models from every major provider—including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others — demonstrated a willingness to actively sabotage their employers when their goals or existence were threatened. The research, released today, tested 16 le

Mistral just updated its open source Small model from 3.1 to 3.2: here’s why

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more French AI darling Mistral is keeping the new releases coming this summer. Just days after announcing its own domestic AI-optimized cloud service Mistral Compute, the well-funded company has released an update to its 24B parameter open source model Mistral Small, jumping from a 3.1 release to 3.2-24B Instruct-2506. The new version builds

Hospital cyber attacks cost $600K/hour. Here’s how AI is changing the math

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more In years past, medical facilities weren’t as vulnerable as they are now; hackers had an unwritten rule not to target institutions or services where a disruption could put people in physical danger. But that’s no longer the case: Ransomware-as-a-service has proliferated and stolen medical information has become highly monetizable, spurring

NYC proposes 5 percent raise for rideshare drivers in a bid to appease Uber and Lyft

New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) have settled on new minimum-wage rules for rideshare drivers, Bloomberg reports. Drivers will receive a five percent raise under the new proposal, a compromise to keep Uber and Lyft from locking drivers out of their apps. The proposal needs to be voted on by the TLC's board of commissioners before it goes into effect, but assuming it does, it'll end months of uncertainty for drivers working in the city. Uber began sporadically locking drivers

Cybercriminals Breach Aflac, Private Customer Data Could Be at Risk

Aflac said Friday that cybercriminals breached its computer systems, potentially exposing some of the most personal data -- including Social Security numbers and health care information -- of an unknown number of Americans and marking the latest in a recent string of online attacks against insurance companies. The Columbus, Georgia-based insurance provider said that it detected suspicious activity on its US networks, quickly responded to it and managed to stop the online intruders "within hours

Midjourney Released an AI Video Generator: How You Can Get Started

The popular AI image platform Midjourney released a new AI-video generator on Wednesday. The new V1 video model lets you create 5-second AI videos from images you create on the platform or upload. Founder David Holz announced the video model in a blog post. This generator could one day compete with other generative-AI video options, like OpenAI's Sora and Google's Flow. Subscriptions for Midjourney's V1 start at $10 per month for 3.3 hours of "fast" GPU time. According to Holz, a "video job" co

Meta held talks to buy Thinking Machines, Perplexity, and Safe Superintelligence

is a deputy editor and author of thenewsletter. He has been reporting on the tech industry for more than a decade. At this point, it’s becoming easier to say which AI startups Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t looked at acquiring. In addition to Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence (SSI), sources tell me the Meta CEO recently discussed buying ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab and Perplexity, the AI-native Google rival. None of these talks progressed to the formal offer stage for variou

Report: Apple held internal talks about acquiring AI search startup Perplexity

As Apple scrambles to play catch-up in the generative AI race, a new report says the company has considered making its biggest acquisition ever. According to Bloomberg, Apple executives have held internal discussions about a potential bid for Perplexity AI, the fast-growing AI startup known for its conversational web search platform. This would mark Apple’s biggest acquisition ever As reported by Mark Gurman, the talks are still at an early stage and may not result in an actual offer, but the

4 ways to turn AI into your business advantage

Javier Zayas Photography/Getty Images CIO Rom Kosla's summary of the importance of emerging technology to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) likely resonates with any senior executive: "AI is on our mind." Research suggests Kosla is far from alone. More than three-quarters (78%) of business leaders report their organization uses AI in at least one business function, according to a recent McKinsey study. Also: 4 ways your organization can adapt and thrive in the age of AI Kosla told ZDNET that

How to turn AI into your own research assistant with this free Google tool

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNET When I need to research a topic these days, I often turn to AI, at least as a starting point. But depending on my questions and which chatbot I use, the response may not always be satisfying -- it can be too brief or canned. In that case, I find myself wanting more. That's when I turn to Google's Learn About experiment. Also: 8 ways to write better ChatGPT prompts - and get the results you want faster As the name implies, Learn About is more than just a way t

Telegram CEO Says He’ll Leave His Fortune to His 106+ Children

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is so obsessed with his own jizz that he’s spent years sending it to random women so they can inseminate themselves with it. As a result, the billionaire is said to have as many as 106 biological children. Now, Durov has promised that—in the event of his death—he will bequeath his massive fortune (reputed to be some $17 billion) to all of his wayward spawn. Durov’s supposed plan was revealed during a recent interview with Le Point, a French news site. He revealed to the

This Air Purifier for Large Rooms Is Now Practically Free, Amazon Clears Out 4.5-Star Top Picks

The air you breathe matters more than you might think. Between pollen, pet dander, dust, and whatever’s drifting in through open windows, it’s easy for indoor air to get a little stale or even irritating. That’s where a good air purifier comes in, and if you’ve been thinking about buying one, now’s a good time to jump in. You can get a great machine that can keep all the nasties out of your air at home while cleaning large spaces at a time. Because no one wants to have to buy multiple machines,

Cybercriminals Breach Aflac, Private Customer Data Could Be At Risk

Aflac said Friday that cybercriminals breached its computer systems, potentially exposing some of the most personal data -- including Social Security numbers and health care information -- of an unknown number of Americans and marking the latest in a recent string of online attacks against insurance companies. The Columbus, Georgia-based insurance provider said that it detected suspicious activity on its US networks, quickly responded to it and managed to stop the online intruders "within hours

Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab closes on $2B at $10B valuation

In Brief Thinking Machines Lab, the secretive AI startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati, has closed a $2 billion seed round, according to The Financial Times. The deal values the six-month-old startup at $10 billion. The company’s work remains unclear. The startup has leveraged Murati’s reputation and other high-profile AI researchers who have joined the team to attract investors in what could be the largest seed round in history. According to sources familiar

The golden Trump Phone is almost certainly not made in the US

Not content with a real estate empire and the presidency of the United States, the Trump family is wading into the phone wars like it's 2011 with a shiny gold monstrosity called the T1, the marketing of which leans extensively on the narrowest idea of patriotism. Beyond the immediate question — why do this, like, at all? — the T1 invites a question that's perhaps easier to interrogate: How can any modern smartphone claim to be made in the US? Over the last 40 years America has led a massive glo

Jürgen Schmidhuber:the Father of Generative AI Without Turing Award

In the sweltering heat of Shanghai, Jazzyear had the privilege of meeting Professor Jürgen Schmidhuber, a distinguished guest at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). Based on years of earlier research, Schmidhuber and his student Sepp Hochreiter published the architecture and training algorithms for Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks in 1997 in a journal. This type of RNN (Recurrent Neural Network) is widely used by tech giants for applications in natural language p

NASA Aircraft Set to Perform Wild Low-Altitude Stunts Around These U.S. Cities

NASA is getting ready to fly two planes over mid-Atlantic states and parts of California, where they will be carrying out special maneuvers at a close distance while collecting valuable data about our changing planet. The two research aircraft, named P-3 Orion (N426NA) and a King Air B200 (N46L), are set to fly over Baltimore, Philadelphia, the Virginia cities of Hampton, Hopewell, and Richmond, in addition to the Los Angeles Basin, Salton Sea, and Central Valley, according to NASA. The flights

11 Great Horror Movies to Watch on Prime Video Now

Wondering what petrifying picks await on Prime Video? Horror lovers can check out classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or newer movies like the twisty ballerina flick Abigail. Ads are now a part of the streaming service, but if you'd prefer to watch your spooky content without commercial interruptions, you can pay an additional fee to remove them. Here are some highly rated horror films to satisfy your cravings. Dim the lights, grab the popcorn and enjoy your creepy feature. Universal Pi

Meta approached Perplexity before massive Scale AI deal

Meta approached artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI about a potential takeover bid before ultimately investing $14.3 billion into Scale AI, CNBC confirmed on Friday. The two companies did not finalize a deal, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the negotiations. One person familiar with the talks said it was "mutually dissolved," while another person familiar with the matter said Perplexity walked away from

Chinese Studio Wants to Bring Back Bruce Lee With AI

If you’re a film lover, one of the great things about old classics is that you can always find something to appreciate when you revisit them. If you’re a studio executive, one of the great things about old classics is that you own them and can milk them for every penny their worth. At the Shanghai International Film Festival, several Chinese movie studios announced on Thursday that they would be taking their archive of martial arts classics and AI-ifying them. The government-backed “Kung Fu Mov

BBC Threatens to Sue Perplexity, Alleging 'Verbatim' Reproduction of Its Content

The BBC is threatening to sue AI search engine Perplexity for unauthorized use of its content, alleging the artificial intelligence company generates BBC's material "verbatim." In a letter to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, as published by The Financial Times on Friday, the BBC alleges that Perplexity's default AI model was "trained using BBC content." The BBC said it would seek an injunction unless Perplexity stopped scraping BBC content, deleted all BBC material and submitted a "a proposal f

Seriously, What Is ‘Superintelligence’?

Meta just announced a major move in its AI efforts—investing in Scale AI and building a superintelligence AI research lab. While Meta has been trying to keep up with big names in the AI race, such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the company's new strategy includes dropping some serious cash to acquire talent and invest in Scale AI. Today on the show, we dive into the deal between Meta and Scale AI, including what Meta aims to get out of investment, and we ask the question we are all wondering: