An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. "The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense," he said in an interview with WIRED.

The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Other notable backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel. AMI (pronounced like the French word for friend) aims to build "a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe," the company says in a press release. The startup says it will be global from day one, with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, where LeCun will continue working as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025. [...]

LeCun says AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability. LeCun says AMI will release its first AI models quickly, but he's not expecting most people to take notice. The company will first work with partners such as Toyota and Samsung, and then will learn how to apply its technology more broadly. Eventually, he says, AMI intends to develop a "universal world model," which would be the basis for a generally intelligent system that could help companies regardless of what industry they work in. "It's very ambitious," he says with a smile.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

De Guyaanse dichter en activist Martin Carter werd in 1953 gearresteerd door de Britse koloniale bezetter. Voor de opera die hem portretteert op de laatste dag van zijn hongerstaking, schreef Tessa McWatt het libretto: „Carter moet een keuze maken. Eten of niet eten?”

Sinds de Middeleeuwen beheren en bouwen de waterschappen cruciale infrastructuur. Is dat een voorbeeld voor onze afhankelijkheid van IT?

As Zhou Guanyu returns to his hometown Grand Prix in Shanghai as reserve driver for Cadillac, his status as a fashion icon and national hero has already been secured...

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Day two tips | Lossiemouth saunters to glory | Mail Niall

Read all of Greg’s day two tips here:

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Decision to shield pro-Bolsonaro truck driver sentenced for 8 January 2023 attack could inflame Brazil election politics

Argentina has granted asylum to a Brazilian fugitive convicted for his role in 2023 pro-Bolsonaro riots – a decision that analysts say could reverberate in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election.

A week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, took office, hundreds of people ransacked Brazil’s congress building, presidential palace and supreme court on 8 January 2023, in an attempt to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat. Investigators later concluded the attacks were the culmination of a broader plot aimed at staging a coup.

Alongside Bolsonaro and members of his inner circle, who were convicted for their role in the plot, hundreds of rioters were given sentences of up to 17 years in prison for vandalism and insurrection. Dozens fled to Argentina after Javier Milei, a rightwing libertarian, took office in December 2023.

In 2024, Brazil requested the extradition of 61 of its citizens. Argentine federal police arrested five of them, and in December, a federal judge ordered their extradition.

But this week, one of them – Joel Borges Correa, 47, was informed that Argentina’s refugee commission (Conare) – which operates under the security ministry – ruled that he should be granted asylum.

Borges Correa had applied for asylum in 2024, one of 196 Brazilians who sought refugee status in Argentina that year, according to official data. In his testimony, he said he had gone to the government buildings carrying a Brazilian flag to protest against “Lula’s projects in favour of abortion and the legalisation of drugs” – policies that have not been enacted. He was arrested inside the Planalto presidential palace, the president’s official workplace, and later sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison.

In April 2024, attempting to avoid arrest, Borges Correa cut off his ankle monitor and drove to the Argentine border with three other convicted fugitives. Conare concluded that Borges Correa faced discrimination and persecution because of his political opinions, which it said could be “inferred from his participation in the mobilisation on 8 January”, and that the “Brazilian state is the main persecuting agent”.

“There is a very evident human rights issue, a matter of political persecution,” said Pedro Gradin, Borges Correa’s lawyer. “With asylum granted, he will regularise his immigration status. Now they must release him and remove his ankle monitor so that he can live his life like any other citizen.”

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No longer under the tyranny of compression fit leggings, today’s athleisure is something looser, with a wink of nostalgia

Athleisure is not to be confused with serious fitness wear. No one is running a marathon or playing a game of football in the shoes pictured above. Notice how, in a made-up noun that is a compound of athletics and leisure, the first has been shrunk to three letters. The only personal best that concerns you here is having an optimal Saturday morning.

Athleisure is fashion, not kit, so it moves with the times just as much as it moves with you. And it looks very different now than a few years ago, when every outfit was anchored by snazzy leggings. Tight legging sets with dazzling graphics were the parade uniform of the imperial age of Lycra. Under the cheerful tyranny of compression fit, starburst-pattern leggings with matching sports bras ruled the roost. These were outfits designed to be watched in a mirror with a rousing soundtrack: perky and sculpting, lingerie-like in their obsession with matching two-piece sets and with bottoms.

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The Ukrainian-born entrepreneur founded Almaz Capital in 2008 to help connect Western money with start-ups in Russia and Eastern and Central Europe.

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn woensdag met wisselende koersuitslagen geopend. Beleggers op Wall Street blijven de ontwikkelingen rond de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten en op de oliemarkten in de gaten houden. Software- en cloudbedrijf Oracle kwam met kwartaalresultaten en stond bij de stijgers.

De olieprijzen gingen woensdag weer omhoog na de flinke daling een dag eerder. Het Internationaal Energieagentschap (IEA) kondigt woensdagmiddag volgens ingewijden een gecoördineerde vrijgave van strategische oliereserves aan van in totaal 400 miljoen vaten. Dit om zo de sterk gestegen energieprijzen te helpen drukken en de oliemarkt te kalmeren. Het gaat om de grootste gezamenlijke vrijgave van noodreserves door de IEA-lidstaten ooit.

De Dow-Jonesindex noteerde kort na opening 0,2 procent lager op 47.617 punten. De brede S&P 500 steeg 0,1 procent tot 6790 punten en de technologiebeurs Nasdaq klom 0,3 procent tot 22.774 punten.