FeedCity

Perhaps the worst UI crime in MacOS 26 Tahoe was the inexplicable decision to add inscrutable, distracting icons next to every item in the menu bar. You will recall Jim Nielsen writing about it, rightly describing it as exactly the sort of thing that Mac users look down upon...

The White House’s Top Science Goal Is Ignorance. “The actions are seen as a deliberate attempt to stifle science and ignore the reality of climate change, in order to support the fossil-fuel industry and satisfy the climate denialism of Trump’s base.”

Known for his vibrant palettes and flattened perspectives, Kristof Santy translates common sights and everyday objects into vivid tableaux.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Domestic Arrangements Unfold in Kristof Santy’s Vivid Paintings appeared first on Colossal.

Oof, what a beauty. In the 1960s, four Porsche 912s were customized for use as police cars in Japan. This one, which was used in Kanagawa until 1973, is the only one left standing (and even it needed restoration). This Japanese police 912 served in Kanagawa Prefecture fro...

DiffusionGemma

Last May Google briefly released an experimental Gemini Diffusion model. I tried the preview at the time and recorded it running at 857 tokens/second. It was an exciting model, but Google made no further announcements about it.

That research has returned in the best possible way: as a new open weight (Apache 2 licensed) Gemma model, google/diffusiongemma-26B-A4B-it.

NVIDIA are currently hosting the model for free on their NIM cloud API. I used that API to generate this pelican, which took 4.4s (according to time uv run generate.py) to return 2,409 tokens - so at least 500 tokens/second.

Via Hacker News

Tags: google, ai, generative-ai, llms, nvidia, pelican-riding-a-bicycle, gemma, llm-release, llm-performance

Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized. SEO (and Google’s embrace of it) has spent the last 25 years ruining the internet and search results. Now it’s GEO’s turn (generative-engine optimization).

The Best Headlights in the World Are Illegal in America. “America’s roads are now full of tactical-grade headlights, and no one is happy about it.”

Charity Majors, writing about how high-performing engineering teams are dealing with the transition from pre-AI to AI-native development: AI enthusiasts are in a race against time, AI skeptics are in a race against entropy. This is not a situation where one side is right a...

"My mom and I lived together for five years—the breast cancer years—until she died from the disease."

The Morgan Library & Museum presents 'Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions' and delves into this centuries-old tradition of divination.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Divination, the Renaissance, and Surrealism Commingle in ‘Tarot!’ appeared first on Colossal.

Tiffany Muller talks to me about what Citizens United enabled, how crypto and AI fit into the bigger picture of money in politics, and what it would actually take to fix this broken system.

Unsurprising open corruption from FIFA & the Trump regime: FIFA rents an office in Trump Tower. “The rent goes to President Trump’s family business, but soccer officials say the space sits largely idle.” That’s called a bribe.

Anthropic released Claude Fable, its first Mythos-class AI model, yesterday and it's already causing concerns inside Microsoft. Sources tell me that Microsoft is limiting the use of Claude Fable 5 for employees because of Anthropic's new data retention requirements. While Microsoft quickly rolled out Claude Fable 5 to its GitHub Copilot and Foundry customers, I'm […]

"As vultures vanished, dogs multiplied, and rabies spread. Humans are living with the consequences."

Thomas Bangalter, one half of the legendary duo Daft Punk, played a 75-minute DJ set for The Lot Radio the other day. He played tracks by Boards of Canada, Burial, Sonic Youth, and even Daft Punk (full setlist). The set is also available on Soundcloud. Bangalter also put ...

Rebels fighting the military government in Myanmar have told the BBC they're losing ground because of a shortage of manpower and equipment. Also: after exchanging attacks overnight, the US and Iran accuse each other of damaging negotiations; Afghanistan says Pakistan killed ...

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake. “I am a nice horse. I do not fuss. I do not bite the human woman’s face, even though her hair smells nice. I do not ask to go live free in the woods like the deer. I do my duties. I must try cake. Please.”

The teaser trailer for the sequel to David Fincher’s The Social Network is here — they’re calling the movie “a companion piece” to the first film. It’s based on The Facebook Files: Primarily, the reports revealed that, based on internally commissioned studies, the company...