2 h. ago Meta says its Llama AI models have been downloaded 1.2B times

In mid-March, Meta said that its “open” AI model family, Llama, hit 1 billion downloads, up from 650 million downloads as of early December 2024. On Tuesday at its inaugural LlamaCon developer conference, Meta revealed that figure has reached 1.2 billion downloads. “We have thousands of developers contributing tens of thousands of derivative models being downloaded […]

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9 h. ago Here’s how to watch LlamaCon, Meta’s first AI developer event

On Tuesday, Meta is hosting LlamaCon, its first-ever AI developer event. It’ll center around the company’s Llama family of open AI models, and we’re expecting some big updates for developers. Also on the agenda: keynotes from Meta executives and fireside chats with Big Tech CEOs and Meta’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg. Meta is hosting a small […]

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5 d. ago Meta conducts layoffs in Oculus Studios, impacting VR exercise app Supernatural

Meta laid off employees on Thursday in its Reality Labs division, which encompasses various virtual and augmented reality projects. The cuts impact employees within Oculus Studios, which develops apps and games for Meta’s Quest headsets. Meta did not specify how many people were impacted by the layoffs but said that the cuts impacted people working […]

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2 w. ago Stainless steel strengthened: Twisting technique creates submicron 'anti

A combined team of metallurgists, materials scientists and engineers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shandong University and the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a way to make stainless steel more resistant to metal fatigue. In their study published in the journal Science, the group developed a new twisting technique that functions as an "anti-crash wall" in the steel, giving it much more strength and resistance to cyclic creep.

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4 w. ago Meta allegedly used pirated books to train AI—US courts may decide if this is 'fair use'

Companies developing AI models, such as OpenAI and Meta, train their systems on enormous datasets. These consist of text from newspapers, books (often sourced from unauthorized repositories), academic publications and various internet sources. The material includes works that are copyrighted.

Events

4 w. ago Highly twisted metamaterial rods store large amounts of energy

An international research team coordinated at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) has developed mechanical metamaterials with a high elastic energy density. Highly twisted rods that deform helically provide these metamaterials with a high stiffness and enable them to absorb and release large amounts of elastic energy. The researchers conducted simple compression experiments to confirm the initial theoretical results. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature.

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