Ending any story is hard, but that’s especially true of mystery-packed TV shows. Series like Lost initially hook viewers with constantly building secrets and questions, to the point that they can often seem incomprehensible. But the promise is that it will all pay off in the end – a feat that few shows ultimately manage. […]
Comcast has announced plans to separate itself into two publicly traded companies, spinning off its NBCUniversal and Sky broadcasting arms. The shake up aims to protect the media conglomerate’s profitable broadband and wireless brand, which will retain the “Comcast” company name, as its media and entertainment business – now collectively named “NBCUniversal” – faces increasing […]
A sneaky rule change has the potential to blow up scientific research in the United States. But there’s still time to fight it. On May 29th, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a 412-page proposal to revise federal financial assistance. The language is a combination of distinctly Trumpian attacks on “woke” policies and […]
China’s Zhipu AI (Z.ai) released its open-weight GLM-5.2, and some researchers have claimed that it matches Mythos in certain bug-finding and cybersecurity scenarios. While GLM lags behind models from Anthropic and OpenAI in other, more general tasks, it seems that China has dramatically reduced the gap in the capabilities between its models and those of […]
Streaming ads might be getting a lot quieter.
Suno has ambitions to be more than just a toy to churn out AI slop, it also wants to be a streaming destination and to break new artists. Spark is their new incubator program for independent artists that provides grants, mentorship, and marketing support. To apply, artists need to be an unsigned singer, songwriter, or […]
“Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence … that would produce a high-quality product.”
Despite trade restrictions, China has reclaimed the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer for the first time since 2018. LineShine has pushed El Capitan out of number one on the TOP500 ranking. That’s despite strict limits on what high-powered computing components can be sold to China by US firms, which dominate the list, with America […]
Has Silicon Valley been building the wrong things?
I’m sure we’re all familiar with Dark Crystal, so we know that Jim Henson can be weird and tackle slightly more mature subject matter. But there is little in his oeuvre that is quite as mind-bending as the Muppetless The Cube. This 1969 teleplay was produced for an NBC anthology series called Experiment in Television, […]