Free Republic

Google Deepmind's new framework AlphaProof Nexus has autonomously solved nine out of 353 open Erdős problems it attempted, including two questions that had gone unanswered for 56 years. The system also proved 44 out of 492 open conjectures from the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS), settled a 15-year-old question about Hilbert functions in algebraic geometry, and improved a known bound in convex optimization. Inference costs ran just a few hundred dollars per problem, according to the research paper. Unlike (potentially) pure natural-language approaches such as OpenAI's recent solution, the underlying language model in AlphaProof Nexus—in this case Gemini 3.1...

Warships used to be defined by crews. Increasingly, they are being defined by payloads, autonomy and software. A 75-meter ship with no crew quarters says a lot about where naval design may be heading. Navantia Spanish shipbuilder Navantia has unveiled a new large autonomous surface vessel concept designed to support future naval operations involving both crewed and uncrewed platforms. The concept, called LASV75, was presented at the Combined Naval Event (CNE) in Farnborough and reflects the company’s vision of a future “hybrid navy” in which traditional warships operate alongside autonomous escorts, drones, and other uncrewed systems. Designed in the UK...

Two billboards went up in New York City recently. This is a city of advertising, where images appear when someone wants the whole world to see them. One billboard is selling artificial intelligence, and the other is warning about it. The juxtaposition between these two advertisers, who most likely wouldn’t have seen the other’s message in advance, captures the conflict of our times and cements the uncertainty about the future within an artificial intelligence world.The selling billboard is dark, purple, and almost cinematic.An AI-generated face with artificial perfection stares out. Three words above her say: “Stop Hiring Humans.” The Era...

A Chinese AI startup says it has cracked the code on what your dog is trying to tell you, and the internet is having a field day with it. The company behind PettiChat claims its wearable device can translate pet vocalizations and behavior into human language with up to 95 percent accuracy. That number went viral after Polymarket posted the claim to X. PettiChat describes itself as the “world’s first real-time pet translator” and is currently raising money on Kickstarter. The device is a small wearable that attaches to a pet’s collar and pairs with a smartphone app. According to...

OpenAI says its AI model solved a famous 80-year-old maths problem that puzzled experts for decades, marking a major breakthrough in AI-powered research and reasoning.The artificial intelligence boom is real. Sectors like healthcare, IT, education and many others are rapidly moving towards AI adoption. Now mathematicians have also acknowledged how AI is proving its mettle. OpenAI announced on Wednesday that one of its reasoning models has solved a famous maths problem that humans could not solve in 80 years. Notably, the maths problem, known as the ‘planet unit distance’, was initially proposed in 1946 by legendary mathematician Paul Erdős. Since...

I got 9/10 - Newsroom-worthy That’s editor-level mastery. You clearly keep up with what's going on in the world. Or subscribe to all our newsletters. Either way — well done. That's the same as your average from previous quizzes. ============================================================= I didn't know the one about the 'RAP' star for some reason...........🙄

Caleb Vazquez, one of two teens responsible for the mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, was on the autism spectrum and influenced by hateful rhetoric online, his family described in a heartfelt apology. “Over the last several days, our family has been trying to process the horrific actions carried out by our son against the Islamic Center San Diego Community,” the 18-year-old’s family said in a statement released by attorney Colin Rudolph. “We want to begin by acknowledging that nothing we say or do could ever repair the damage his actions have caused. We are completely heartbroken...

A leaked audio recording reveals Zuckerberg's real explanation for why Meta was tracking its workers. You've heard of "learn by doing." Meta invented "learn by watching employees do it, then replace them." A leaked audio recording from a Meta all-hands meeting, obtained by More Perfect Union, captures Mark Zuckerberg explaining that Meta has been monitoring employee activity across Gmail, GChat, internal tool Metamate, and VSCode (the coding software most engineers use) to train its AI models. His reasoning: the AI "learns from watching really smart people do things," and elite engineers make better training subjects than outside contractors. Which is,...

nvestigators said a scammer pretending to be actor Tom Selleck had defrauded an elderly couple in Riverside County who was later found dead in a suspected murder-suicide. On May 15, deputies from the Thermal Sheriff’s Station were called to a home in the 79000 block of Montego Bay Drive in Bermuda Dunes just before midnight for a welfare check. Inside the home, two people were found with traumatic injuries — Donald Whitaker, 80, and his wife, Karen Whitaker, 79. They were pronounced dead at the scene. It all began after Karen posted a message on Facebook about a friend who...

How Meta announced its latest round of 1000s of layoffs.

C-SPAN coverage features cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the impact of screen time and classroom technology on youth. In his testimony, Dr. Horvath warned lawmakers that Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform previous generations across cognitive measures like attention, memory, and general IQ. He argued that introducing digital devices into learning environments has actively contributed to this cognitive decline, as human brains are not biologically wired to learn from screens. This is the first generation in human history that is getting DUMBER...

Elon Musk has revealed plans to float SpaceX in the US, paving the way for the largest stock market float in history set to make him a trillionaire. The rocket, satellite and AI firm filed its highly anticipated prospectus with US regulators on Wednesday, which revealed SpaceX had chosen Nasdaq to make its debut under the ticker SPCX. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission did not reveal the exact amount SpaceX was looking to raise. Reports suggest Musk is looking at raising about $75billion at a $1.75trillion valuation. That would put Musk on track to become the first...

Whenever you read about artificial intelligence, you hear the same sweeping promises. Commentators and industry leaders speak of breakthroughs that always seem just over the horizon. AI will revolutionize science, unlock new materials, transform industries, and reshape nearly every facet of life.In regards to medicine, we are told that AI will one day cure cancer, eliminate Alzheimer’s, and solve diseases that have plagued humanity for generations. Even many AI critics concede these points. They warn about the risks, but still acknowledge the extraordinary potential.And yet, despite this widespread belief in what AI could become, public sentiment is moving in the...

She was “praying to Poseidon” that she’d get laid off. But on Wednesday morning, as thousands of her Meta colleagues found out they’d lost their jobs, the app designer was disappointed to find she still had hers. She’s now one of just two survivors on her team, left behind to navigate Meta’s shift to AI. “Thinking about what the company will be like after the layoffs depresses me more than thinking about getting laid off,” she said, asking for anonymity. “Nobody wants to stick around for that.” Hundreds of Meta employees in the Bay Area woke up early Wednesday to...

What if every U.S. state were a person you could meet on the street, in a diner, out in the wilderness, or behind a smoky grill? This coast-to-coast collection imagines exactly that—one woman for every state, each captured in a moment that reflects her home’s spirit, culture, quirks, and contradictions.

"Our company has fully adopted AI. All of our computers have AI. We use AI in all of our meetings. And, it's got an AI assistant. Heck, we even got an AI note taker. We really love using AI during lunch." "How's your business doing?" "Terrible. But we are early adopters...so, we'll be fine." "All of our computers have AI"

$1 trillion. That's the approximate valuation that OpenAI is eyeing for its public debut, Reuters reported last October. SpaceX is targeting between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion in its IPO valuation, which would shatter the previous record set by Saudi Aramco's $29 billion offering in 2019. OpenAI's last private valuation was $852 billion thanks to a $122 billion funding round in March.

Based on the BullSequana XH300 rack, the supercomputer features a mix of AMD and NVIDIA CPUs and GPUs, with IBM’s Spectrum Scale storage. Representative image of a supercomputer at Airbus. Bull French aircraft giant Airbus recently inaugurated new supercomputing infrastructure spread across two sites, one in France and one in Germany, as it looks to design the future of aerospace. The company has used high-performance computers (HPC) or supercomputers for over two decades and upgraded its infrastructure with a €100 million (US$116 million) investment over five years with advanced computing provider, Bull. Supercomputers are highly specialized computing systems that can...

The era of the “ten blue links” is officially over. At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined “intelligent search box” — what the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago. Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build...

Watch the video at the X link (it's only 25 seconds). Still photos below.