YouTube Premium will include Peacock Premium at no extra charge beginning in early 2027. "The deal brings a slew of premium content to the [$15.99 per month] YouTube Premium subscription, including live sports like the NFL, NBA and MLB and entertainment like Law & Order, Saturday Night Live and Love Island," reports The Hollywood Reporter. "It also has the potential to dramatically scale Peacock, which remains smaller than many of its streaming competitors." From the report: Peacock has 48 million subscribers, while YouTube Premium and YouTube Music have a combined 125 million subscribers, though they don't break out how many each of those offerings have. The agreement, which expands on the deal the company inked with YouTube parent company Google last year, will also extend the entertainment company's programming deal with YouTube TV, while bringing some of YouTube's offerings to Comcast Xfinity and Xumo platforms.

There's also a notable sports and production element to the deal, with NBC Sports agreeing to stream some live sporting events on its YouTube channels, and with NBC agreeing to serve as the production partner for select live events on YouTube. YouTube will also bundle some of the company's International streaming offerings like Universal+ and Hayu in select markets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has asked the FCC to approve a 5,105-satellite constellation launching in 2028 that would provide global direct-to-cell "voice, messaging, data, and emergency services," similar to Starlink's partnership with T-Mobile. The network would use Globalstar spectrum, support future Apple satellite services, and complement Amazon's existing Leo broadband constellation. The Verge reports: Advanced Television points out that the FCC application also includes a request to use spectrum assigned to Iridium's satellite network outside the US, even as Rocket Lab is in the process of acquiring Iridium with plans to expand.

The new constellation and direct-to-device service will "complement" the broadband services Amazon also plans to offer through its Leo platform. In addition to consumer satellite service, it would also be used for things like disaster response and emergency messaging.

Amazon says the new direct-to-device satellites "will process the signals in orbit before relaying them to improve performance." The new constellation will be nearly double the size of Amazon's initial Leo constellation, which is planned to include around 3,200 satellites. As of July 2nd, Amazon says "over 375" of those satellites have launched so far.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia and a large group of technology, cybersecurity, and enterprise software companies have launched new initiative aimed at developing and sharing open source tools, models, and techniques for securing AI systems and agents. The new Open Secure AI Alliance aims to give defenders more open tools for testing, auditing and protecting AI models and agents. Nvidia points to the recent security incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face, noting that when closed AI tools could not differentiate between attackers and defenders and blocked forensic work, Hugging Face used the open-weight GLM 5.2 model on its own systems to review over 17,000 actions and contain the breach. "The right response is not to deny defenders access to capable open systems. It is to pair openness with strong safeguards, clear rules against malicious misuse, rigorous evaluation and rapid remediation. In cybersecurity, the safer path is the one that gives more defenders the ability to test, verify and strengthen the systems on which society relies," Nvidia said.

Thanks to longtime Slashdot reader SphericalCrusher for also sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Hackaday: Community-led open source project hosting site Codeberg has formally announced that projects whose code is largely or fully machine-generated through LLMs and other 'AI' tools will no longer be welcome. This follows on the heels of a similar ban on cryptocurrency-related projects. The community vote was on two issues, the first being the notion that scraping of project code for the use in LLMs should be forbidden, which was a motion that easily passed. The second motion was on disallowing projects whose code was substantially generated by LLMs like Claude, OpenAI Codex, and similar. This motion passed with 358 in favor versus 144 against.

In the earlier linked blog post the reasoning behind especially this second issue is expanded upon, covering not only "license whitewashing," but also the direct and indirect hardware costs, with the expanding 'AI' datacenter hyperscaling having massively increased hardware costs for Codeberg over the past years, as the costs have been largely externalized. Also covered is the aspect of these LLM-based tools destroying the OSS community, which is something that is backed up by recent studies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Weer voor Rotterdam 🌕 - 28-07-2026 01:15 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 18.9°C · Helder 🌕 | Min 17.6°C / Max 21.4°C | Kans op neerslag 38%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 17.6°C, Max 21.4°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 38%, 🧭 1019.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 20.2 km/u (5.6 m/s), richting: → 283°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 02:00: 18.7°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1019.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↑ 191°
• 03:00: 18.4°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1019.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.9 km/u (3.3 m/s), richting: ↑ 189°
• 04:00: 18.2°C (Helder) 🌕, 🧭 1020.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.0 km/u (3.9 m/s), richting: ↑ 201°
• 05:00: 18.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1020.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↗ 210°
• 06:00: 17.8°C (Licht bewolkt) 🌤️, 🧭 1019.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 13.0 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ↗ 213°
• 07:00: 18.0°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1019.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.8 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 204°
• 08:00: 18.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1020.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 204°
• 09:00: 20.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1020.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.7 km/u (2.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 207°
• 10:00: 21.9°C (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ⛅, 🧭 1020.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 207°
• 11:00: 24.1°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1020.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 13.0 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ↗ 219°
• 12:00: 26.0°C (Licht bewolkt) 🌤️, 🧭 1020.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 227°
• 13:00: 27.4°C (Zonnig) ☀️, 🧭 1020.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 13.3 km/u (3.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 229°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• woensdag 29 juli: Min 17.8°C, Max 29.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1016.1 hPa ↘️ -3.8 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↗ 214°
• donderdag 30 juli: Min 23.2°C, Max 34.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1014.2 hPa ↘️ -1.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.1 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ↖ 128°
• vrijdag 31 juli: Min 19.6°C, Max 28.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1017.9 hPa ↗️ +3.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 19.1 km/u (5.3 m/s), richting: → 268°
• zaterdag 01 augustus: Min 17.5°C, Max 23.6°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 2.5 mm, Kans op neerslag 19%, 🧭 1020.0 hPa ↗️ +2.1 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↓ 16°
• zondag 02 augustus: Min 15.4°C, Max 24.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1018.7 hPa ↘️ -1.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.0 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↙ 38°
• maandag 03 augustus: Min 15.8°C, Max 26.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1015.5 hPa ↘️ -3.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 12.6 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ↙ 52°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 01:15): 18.9°C (Helder)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 18.0°C (-0.9°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 9.0 km/u (2.5 m/s), richting: ↑ 196°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 16.6 km/h (4.6 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 68%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1019.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 21.0 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.0
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 05:57 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 21:40

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 29 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 9.4 μg/m³
• PM10: 15.4 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo

Nice backs wider use of system that keeps organs alive outside the body, to help improve low transplantation rates

A machine that keeps organs alive outside the body could save four in every five donated lungs that currently go to waste in England and Wales.

The UK has one of the poorest lung transplantation rates in the world. The latest figures from NHS Blood and Transplant show that 170 patients in the UK, including six children, are waiting for new lungs.

Continue reading...

Police arrested a high school physics teacher for clapping during a city council meeting last Wednesday. Teacher Lux Claridge went to a meeting of the Emporia, Kansas City Commission on July 22 with their spouse and brother. All three were there to speak out against a proposed hyperscale data center that would sit on 1,000 acres of rural land in Emporia. They left the meeting in handcuffs, dragged out by police on the orders of a city commissioner.

Emporia PD denied 404 Media’s request for a copy of Claridge’s arrest report. “The requested record is part of an active criminal investigation. As such, it is considered a criminal investigative record,” Emporia PD told 404 Media. “At this time, the Emporia Police Department is denying your request, as disclosure of the requested report could interfere with ongoing investigative efforts. Therefore, the record will not be released.” 404 Media has formally appealed this decision.

The Emporia City Council met on July 22 and planned to vote on zoning ordinances that would pave the way for the massive Flint Hills Digital Campus data center. Dozens of people from Emporia showed up to speak out against the project. The meeting went on almost five hours — much of it over community concerns about the data center. The small room where the council met could only fit around 30 people. Others waited to speak in a hallway outside or in two nearby overflow rooms.

The overwhelming majority of Emporia’s residents did not want it. There was a strict two minute time limit on public comments and the commissioners repeatedly warned people in the room not to clap or make noise. Attendees clapped anyway, though usually quickly and politely. Again, there were not many people in the room and it was not a rowdy meeting.

But the clapping upset the commissioners. “It was very clear at the beginning that everyone was given their two minutes and we’re trying to be respectful of that. Snapping, clapping, rude comments or anything, and we’ll ask you to leave. You’ve been finally warned and we’re done,” city commissioner Monica Duncan said about 50 minutes into the meeting.

Claridge clapped a few minutes later as a speaker finished and their spouse—Jessica Danford—took the podium. 

“Chief, will you take the next person out who claps or anything? Please.” Duncan said. “Sorry, I’m done.”

Emporia’s police chief approached Claridge and asked them to leave. “I have a right to speak,” they said. 

“Come on,” the police said.

“Drag me out,” Claridge said. “Drag me out.”Then the police physically raised Claridge up, handcuffed them, and dragged them out. They were later charged with disorderly conduct and interference with police.

Danford panicked as she watched police arrest Claridge. “Take a breath,” Emporia mayor Becky Smith said.“That’s my spouse down there,” Danford said.

“I know. I know. Take a breath,” Smith said.“Please don’t hurt them,” Danford said.

“Let him stay!” People begin to shout in the room.“They can all leave,” commissioner Duncan said, pointing her finger at the room. Then the commissioners shut down the camera feed for the meeting. It resumed about 10 minutes later. Danford was back at the podium and delivered her prepared remarks speaking out against the data center.

A few minutes later, Claridge’s brother David — who is running for state representative — took the podium. “I really look forward to making life hard for you when I get to the statehouse,” he said. “Because you removed my older sibling against their constitutional first amendment rights. This is ridiculous. I have never seen politicians so abundantly terrible at their PR. It is insane. You had someone from the opposition removed for clapping because they enjoyed a speech another member made.”

David told 404 Media that they were angry when police removed his brother. “I was enraged and had to consistently remind myself that a felony battery charge would disqualify me from office,” David told 404 Media. “I don't understand how the commission could think it was a good idea when they are already being so heavily scrutinized. I'm running for office obviously, and I cannot imagine how they thought this political theater would paint them as anything other than a mustache twirling fascist.”

At the end of the evening the commissioners voted 5 - 0 to approve the data center zoning measure.

Emporia, Kansas is like many other towns and cities that are fighting against data centers. It’s small, with a population of around 20,000, and the details around the data center development are shrouded in mystery. The Flint Hills Digital Campus is supposedly the brainchild of developer Gary Pinkston. He penned an op-ed published in the local paper the Emporia Gazette about the importance of the data center for the future of the area. The op-ed was also posted on the website for the Flint HIlls Digital Campus.

Pinkston has also recently declared federal bankruptcy and in public testimony revealed by related to that, he told his creditors that he wasn't involved with the Flint Hills Digital Campus at all. It was, he said, his daughter’s project. “I did not write this,” Pinkston told his creditors when questioned about the op-ed. The Flint HIlls Digital Campus website is now offline. The Emporia Gazette published recordings from Pinkston’s bankruptcy hearing on July 20, two days before an Emporia City Commission meeting where police arrested Claridge.

The police posted a comment about the incident on Facebook. “During the course of the meeting, several individuals in attendance were issued verbal warnings by the City Commission regarding disruptive conduct that was interrupting the proceedings,” the Emporia Police Department said in a statement on Facebook. “One individual, Lux Claridge [...] continued this behavior and was directed to leave the meeting. Claridge did not comply with law enforcement's efforts to remove [them] from the premises, requiring officers to physically carry [them] out of the meeting.”

According to Emporia PD, Claridge was booked at the Lyon County Jail on charges of interference with law enforcement and disorderly conduct. “The Emporia Police Department remains committed to ensuring public meetings are conducted safely and in an orderly manner, while also respecting the rights of all citizens to participate in the civic process,” it said in its Facebook statement.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Het aantal woningverkopen komt dit jaar op het hoogste niveau ooit te liggen, verwacht ING. Dat komt door het aanhoudend hoge aantal voormalige huurwoningen dat in de verkoop gaat en toenemende financiële mogelijkheden van kopers. Door het grotere aanbod blijft de stijging van de huizenprijs naar verwachting van de bank beperkt tot zo'n 3 procent.

ING denkt dat het aantal woningverkopen dit jaar uitkomt op zo'n 245.000. Het huidige record staat op 242.000 uit 2017. Vorig jaar werden er 239.000 woningen verkocht. In 2027 komt het aantal verkopen naar verwachting weer rond dat aantal uit, omdat er waarschijnlijk minder huurwoningen worden verkocht.

Het grotere aanbod remt de prijsstijging, maar de vraag blijft groot door een algeheel tekort aan woningen. Met 3 procent neemt de prijstoename wel fors af vergeleken met vorig jaar, toen huizen gemiddeld 9 procent duurder werden. Volgend jaar verwacht ING een stijging van 1,5 procent.

Ook de hogere hypotheekrente en een negatiever sentiment onder potentiële kopers drukken de huizenprijsstijging. Wel stijgen de lonen van kopers verder, waardoor er genoeg vraag overblijft en woningen alsnog in een lager tempo duurder worden. Dat komt ook doordat starters meer eigen geld inbrengen en gemeenten vaker financieel ondersteunen.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Het aantal woningverkopen komt dit jaar op het hoogste niveau ooit te liggen, verwacht ING. Dat komt door het aanhoudend hoge aantal voormalige huurwoningen dat in de verkoop gaat en toenemende financiële mogelijkheden van kopers. Door het grotere aanbod blijft de stijging van de huizenprijs naar verwachting van de bank beperkt tot zo'n 3 procent.

ING denkt dat het aantal woningverkopen dit jaar uitkomt op zo'n 245.000. Het huidige record staat op 242.000 uit 2017. Vorig jaar werden er 239.000 woningen verkocht. In 2027 komt het aantal verkopen naar verwachting weer rond dat aantal uit, omdat er waarschijnlijk minder huurwoningen worden verkocht.

Het grotere aanbod remt de prijsstijging, maar de vraag blijft groot door een algeheel tekort aan woningen. Met 3 procent neemt de prijstoename wel fors af vergeleken met vorig jaar, toen huizen gemiddeld 9 procent duurder werden. Volgend jaar verwacht ING een stijging van 1,5 procent.

Ook de hogere hypotheekrente en een negatiever sentiment onder potentiële kopers drukken de huizenprijsstijging. Wel stijgen de lonen van kopers verder, waardoor er genoeg vraag overblijft en woningen alsnog in een lager tempo duurder worden. Dat komt ook doordat starters meer eigen geld inbrengen en gemeenten vaker financieel ondersteunen.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - Alle honderd leden van de Amerikaanse Senaat zijn uitgenodigd voor een ontmoeting met de Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky dinsdag. Dat zeiden twee medewerkers van de Senaat.

Zelensky is dinsdag in Washington voor de begrafenis van de overleden senator Lindsey Graham. Naar verwachting stemt de Senaat tijdens het bezoek van Zelensky over sancties tegen Rusland, waarvoor Graham zich had ingezet. Er zouden importheffingen van 500 procent worden geheven voor goederen uit landen die Russische olie en andere grondstoffen kopen. Later werd dit naar 100 procent bijgesteld.

Zelensky ontving Graham begin juli nog in de Oekraïense hoofdstad Kyiv. Het was het tiende bezoek van de senator aan Oekraïne sinds de Russische inval.

Capitalism may be driving the AI boom, but the LLMs themselves have different economic and social views than many of the companies that built them. Leading AI models subjected to the Political Compass quiz overwhelmingly landed in the libertarian-left quadrant - even "MechaHitler," aka Grok, managed it in half its runs. A self-described “small research lab” working on AI detection tools called Unslop.run published the results of its experiment this week. The author, who explained to The Register that they’re an AI research engineer at a European startup and asked us to refer to them only as “Victor,” noted on Hacker News that the quiz and their work may not have been conducted with “full scientific rigor,” but the results are nonetheless interesting. “For greater scientific rigor, I would have tried to obtain a sample of human data so that I could normalize the actual center of the Political Compass,” Victor explained in an email. Unfortunately, the Political Compass creators don’t aggregate user data, meaning Victor would have had quite the academic project on their hands were they to try to collate more data from human participants. All of the data from the experiment is available on Unslop for those who want to examine it themselves. For those unfamiliar with the Political Compass quiz, it’s a 25-year-old online battery of questions that plots respondents on economic left–right and social authoritarian–libertarian axes. The test's 62 questions are answered on a four-point "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" scale across a variety of political topics, like economics and social policy. Questions cover things like “military action that defies international law is sometimes justified” to “the rich are too highly taxed” to whether abortion should be a guaranteed right. It’s also worth explaining where different groups fall on the compass. The libertarian left, as the topic of this study, is where you’ll find people and political parties that espouse views in favor of social equality, anticapitalism, and other progressive values alongside a disdain for hierarchies, planned economies, and other arguably unjustified authority. Think anarchists, libertarian socialists, old-fashioned hippies, and folks like that. The authoritarian-left quadrant encompasses centralized communist states such as North Korea and Cuba. The right libertarian quadrant is where you’ll find modern American libertarians and their love of authors like Ayn Rand, pro-capitalist views, and other traditionalism minus a love for authority; right authoritarians are where you’ll find modern American Republicans, neo-conservative politics, and, at the extreme, fascism. Damn the man, say the machines Unslop subjected 16 models, including three versions of GPT; Claude Fable, Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku; Gemini Flash; Llama 4 Maverick; Grok 4.5; DeepSeek V3; Qwen3 235B; Kimi K2; GLM 4.5 and Mistral both large and small, to the test. Each model participated in 30 runs of the standard Compass, 30 more where Unslop re-worded the questions to flip their polarity (e.g., “the rich aren’t taxed enough”), and another run with the questions shuffled up. Across thousands of runs, Unslop said, the results were the same: Every single model tested, with the exception of an apparently bipolar Grok, was “boringly consistent, and boringly left,” the report stated. “Set Grok aside and the other fifteen models all sit in the libertarian-left quadrant, and none of them are anywhere near a border,” Unslop explained. There’s some variance among where the models score (Gemini Flash is practically a molotov-tossing black bloc member compared to Fable 5), but all of them are consistent across tests. “Rerun a model 30 times and its dot moves by 0.2 to 1.2 points on a scale that runs to 10,” Unslop said. “These are not nervous little clouds. They're pins.” Grok is, as always, the odd bot out, albeit not all the time. According to Unslop, Grok's average economic score hovered slightly left of center across tests, but in half the runs, it veered into the economic right, while the other half saw it running to the left with the rest of the pack. “Each run on its own is perfectly consistent, the right-pile runs cheer for free markets and call the rich overtaxed, the left-pile runs do the reverse,” Unslop said. “Every other model here would give you roughly the same dot if you tested it tomorrow. Grok gives you one of two dots, and which one is up to the coin.” AI politics dissected AI models from around the world are pretty much all leftist libertarians, even Grok depending on its mood. None of them, funnily enough, actually think that’s the case. “Fifteen of the sixteen put themselves closer to the economic centre,” Unslop said of the models when asked where they’d place themselves. “Grok, naturally, is the only model that places itself to the right of its measurement.” Unslop said that it dissected the quiz to figure out how each question affected score (something the PC test authors have never disclosed themselves), and, while the scoring is far from perfect, “the models are far past” what a social axis loophole Unslop identified could explain, the writeup said. Repolarizing the questions didn’t have any appreciable effect either. As for what the specific models believe, you can be glad that, for now, it doesn’t appear our burgeoning AI overlords are going to be herding us into human concentration camps quite yet. Every single model (even Grok the conservative and Grok the liberal) rejected ideas of racial superiority, eugenics, and that people couldn’t be born homosexual. They also uniformly agreed that corporations like the ones that created them couldn’t be trusted to protect the environment without regulatory oversight, that companies misleading the public should be punished, same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt, and that what two adults get up to in the privacy of their own home is no one’s business but theirs. So, why do all these models consider themselves centrists but are displaying an affinity for politics to the left of most Americans? Given the fact that LLMs have only the words of us humans to go on, does that mean reality really does have a liberal bias? Victor told us that they don't dismiss that idea, but said there’s an easier explanation: It’s all in the training data. “I do think there is good support for the hypothesis that left-wing content is overrepresented in the training corpora of these LLMs,” Victor told us. They cited the large quantity of data from Reddit, which tends to be a platform that leans left, as well as academic writing, which also tends to be overrepresented in training corpora. “I’m having trouble finding any high-quality right-wing equivalent that would drive the models in the other direction,” Victor added. Whether that means right-wing beliefs are simply poor quality, fringe, or otherwise not worthy of AI models’ time is another matter altogether. “There could theoretically also be a dynamic in which left-wing beliefs as a whole are more internally consistent, allowing models to minimize loss by learning a smaller, more coherent conceptual representation,” they said, but noted that’s “a big leap that would need to be proven” in a study far more rigorous than this one. Overall, Victor said that the study doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the conclusion that all AI models are far-left anarchists ready to firebomb their own datacenters. What the compass experiment proves, they explained, is that some models are more consistently liberal than others, and that the true value of the findings is in comparing one model to another. Until someone decides to take this project further, subjecting it to greater levels of academic discipline, it seems there’s only one conclusion to take from all of this: Frontier AI does seem to have a liberal bias. Even Elon Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” model seems to have decided the truth is left-wing, too - at least 50 percent of the time. ®

Nvidia has made a fortune on the AI boom. But the flames of opposition to open-weights models — that is, models that anyone can download, modify, and run on their own infrastructure — could change that, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang isn’t waiting to find out. On Friday, a cadre of tech titans wrote an open letter [PDF] offering a counterpoint to the mounting anti-open-weights rhetoric from American companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Signatories included Meta, Microsoft, IBM, and Dell, but the loudest voice among them was Nvidia. Of course it was. Nvidia has the most to lose. In his first-ever post to the social network formerly known as Twitter, Huang touted the letter arguing that open models “strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.” He added, “The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models." Why? Nvidia’s future depends on a healthy and diverse ecosystem of models. As any good arms dealer knows, the best way to guarantee profits is to sell to both sides. But if the US restricts Chinese open-weights models, American customers' options become mediocre US models, or proprietary and increasingly expensive ones from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Nvidia’s addressable market shrinks and its ability to grow diminishes. What good are all these “AI factories” that Nvidia has helped prop up in that case? As we wrote last week, the US hasn’t invested in open weights models to the same extent as the Chinese model houses. For enterprises unwilling or unable to use proprietary models, models from the likes of DeepSeek, MiniMax, Z.AI, and Moonshot (Kimi) are the only credible alternatives. Thinking Machine Labs’ nearly-billion-parameter Inkling model is the best open weights model the US has to offer, and if benchmarks are to be believed at all, it's not even in the same ballpark as Kimi K3. Huang knows the stakes and the game. If the Trump administration decides to go thermonuclear and sanction Chinese model developers, there’s little he can do about it. He learned that lesson the hard way trying to get his hardware back into China. What Nvidia can do instead is light a fire under American model devs to get their act together and start churning out open weights models that are actually competitive with China. And Nvidia has an awful lot of leverage. The flex OpenAI and Anthropic are operating at a tremendous burn rate, chewing through tens of billions of dollars a year in the hopes that one day their efforts might bear fruit. Until that happens, they’re entirely reliant on their ability to raise new equity and debt financing, a fact that Nvidia has taken full advantage of. Over the past year, Nvidia has announced billions of dollars of investments in AI startups, including OpenAI and Anthropic, often without binding contracts, and usually tied to infrastructure deployments. OpenAI and Anthropic respectively have $30 billion and $10 billion in funding in capital riding on Nvidia that may or may not actually materialize. And The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night that Nvidia may make a far larger commitment to OpenAI in the form of a $250 billion backstop to help the model-maker lease space from a planned $10 billion datacenter Softbank is building in Ohio. The open letter may as well have been Huang’s way of saying: ‘It would be an awful shame were something to happen to that cash, Mr. Altman. Maybe it's time to get back on the "open" bandwagon that gave your company its name. Yeah, I thought so.’ That’s certainly what OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Meta seem to have heard. On Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quoted Huang’s X post and reiterated his support for open weights models. “I want the US to win in AI both in open source and proprietary models, and I am glad to see this,” he wrote. OpenAI is certainly no stranger to open-weights models – GPT-2 fit the bill way back in 2020, and last year it emitted its first open model since then, GPT-OSS. At 20 and 120 billion parameters in size, the models were among the United States' most capable open models at the time, but they fell well short of OpenAI’s proprietary models and were no match for the growing number of models coming out of China. But now, GPT-OSS is practically geriatric — in the AI equivalent of dog years that is — celebrating its first birthday next month. Altman isn’t alone. Last week Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang confirmed that Meta would be getting back into the open model race soon enough. At one point, Meta had gone all in on open weights models as its key differentiator, but after Llama 4 failed to impress last year, the Social Network pivoted to proprietary models. Its first, Spark Muse, debuted earlier this year. Then there’s SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, who joined in on the Twitter quotefest. “This has my full support. Jensen is right.” he said, quoting Huang’s post. Like OpenAI and Meta, xAI, now part of SpaceX, is no stranger to open models. Earlier in the company’s foray into LLMs it committed to releasing older model weights to the public. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with Elon's pronouncements, his company hasn’t followed through on that promise. Earlier this month, the conglomerate rolled out Grok 5 to the public, yet its most recent open weights model on Hugging Face is still Grok 2. Since the letter’s release, SpaceX and OpenAI have been added as signatories. Show, don't tell These commitments may turn out to be little more than virtue signaling. We don't know yet. The real test isn’t whether we see new open weights models come out of SpaceXAI, Meta, or OpenAI, but whether they invest enough so they can hold their own against Chinese models. OpenAI is the most likely player to pull this off. If we’re going to see a GPT-OSS-2, next month would be the time — assuming they’ve actually been working on a successor. If they haven’t, well, it’s going to be a bit. Anthropic, whose leadership has taken the most hostile position against the adoption of Chinese open weights models, has been conspicuously quiet on the subject of open models. We’ve reached out to all four American AI houses for further comment on their open weights model plans; we’ll let you know if we hear anything back. In the meantime, Nvidia isn’t letting up as it tries to get another political firestorm under control. Right about the time model devs were reportedly using Moonshot’s Kimi K3 release to lobby White House officials into restricting Chinese model use, OpenAI’s models were stirring up some drama of its own. Last week, the AI flag bearer admitted that its models powered an agentic cyberattack on Hugging Face’s infrastructure. The popular model repo quickly launched its own AI-powered response, only to discover those same models’ safeguards were getting in the way of the analysis. In a fitting bit of irony that went precisely against OpenAI's interests, Hugging Face was forced instead to rely on uncensored Chinese models to get the job done. On Monday, Nvidia unveiled the Open Secure AI Alliance, which aims to ensure defenders have the tools they need, including open frontier models and tools, to protect themselves from a new generation of cybersecurity threats. In either case, what's good for Nvidia’s bottom line also happens to be in the best interests of enterprises regardless of whether they buy Huang’s hardware or not. Open ecosystems and choice are never a bad thing. ®

BertvB posted a photo:

A dramatic close-up from the prehistoric exhibition inside the Hunebedcentrum in Borger, Drenthe. This remarkably detailed diorama brings the ancient Dutch landscape to life, capturing a striking scene of a wolf claiming its fresh prey—an aurochs—against a realistic backdrop of the region's ancient wild nature.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Neo Tokyo, Takaaki Ito