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Anthropic Denies It Could Sabotage AI Tools During War
The Department of Defense alleges the AI developer could manipulate models in the middle of war. Company executives argue that's impossible. Anthropic cannot manipulate its generative AI model Claude once the US military has it running, an executive wrote in a court filing on Friday. The statement was made in response to accusations from the Trump administration about the company potentially tampering with its AI tools during war . "Anthropic has never had the ability to cause Claude to stop working, alter its functionality, shut off access, or otherwise influence or imperil military operations," Thiyagu Ramasamy, Anthropic's head of public sector, wrote .
The biggest medieval march in English history never actually happened
A famous detail in the Battle of Hastings is based on a major misunderstanding. The Battle of Hastings is famously recounted across the Bayeux Tapestry. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. One of history's most famous military marches has been misunderstood for centuries. According to the prevailing English accounts, King Harold made a momentous, 200-mile march over land to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 CE after dismissing his naval fleet.
Precipitation Downscaling with Spatiotemporal Video Diffusion
In climate science and meteorology, high-resolution local precipitation (rain and snowfall) predictions are limited by the computational costs of simulation-based methods. Statistical downscaling, or super-resolution, is a common workaround where a low-resolution prediction is improved using statistical approaches. Unlike traditional computer vision tasks, weather and climate applications require capturing the accurate conditional distribution of high-resolution given low-resolution patterns to assure reliable ensemble averages and unbiased estimates of extreme events, such as heavy rain. This work extends recent video diffusion models to precipitation super-resolution, employing a deterministic downscaler followed by a temporally-conditioned diffusion model to capture noise characteristics and high-frequency patterns. We test our approach on FV3GFS output, an established large-scale global atmosphere model, and compare it against six state-of-the-art baselines. Our analysis, capturing CRPS, MSE, precipitation distributions, and qualitative aspects using California and the Himalayas as examples, establishes our method as a new standard for data-driven precipitation downscaling.
There Aren't a Lot of Reasons to Get Excited About a New Amazon Smartphone
There Aren't a Lot of Reasons to Get Excited About a New Amazon Smartphone The company is reportedly building a new AI-powered mobile device. If Amazon follows through on the plan, experts warn it would be next to impossible to break into a crowded market. Reuters reports that Amazon's Devices and Services unit is working on a smartphone--dubbed Transformer--with Amazon's Alexa+ AI assistant and shopping as a major focus of the experience. It's unclear what this smartphone would cost, how much Amazon is spending to develop Transformer, and what operating system it will run. There's no word on when it will launch, and there's still also a chance the project could be scrapped altogether.
'A Rigged and Dangerous Product': The Wildest Week for Prediction Markets Yet
As the prediction market boom continues, backlash is growing, too, with Arizona filing criminal charges against Kalshi and public outcry after Polymarket traders threatened a journalist. Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour posted a video on Wednesday of six men decked out in business casual doing push-ups on the sidewalk. "This is how Kalshi Q1 board meeting ended," he wrote on X. The board members are laughing and smiling in the video after their impromptu cardio session, and the mood is jubilant. The next day, it became clear that the team had ample reason to celebrate: Kalshi had just raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, making the company worth on paper roughly double what it was only a few months ago.
What 'Jurassic Park' got wrong about venomous dinosaurs
Science Ask Us Anything What'Jurassic Park' got wrong about venomous dinosaurs And what did'Spinosaurus' really do with that sail? Dilophosaurus didn't have a frill or spit venom. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. We all know dinosaurs were scary. While not strictly a dinosaur, the ancient shark was four times longer than the biggest great white. Now, imagine one of those big bad dinos had venom. That'd be the last thing we need, but it very well could've been a reality. In a new episode of's Ask Us Anything podcast, we dig into the fossil record to see just how likely a venomous dinosaur would've been.
The White House proposes new AI policy framework that supersedes state laws
The framework includes proposals for child privacy protections, fewer restrictions around data center buildout and vague ideas about IP licensing. The White House has announced a new AI policy framework that calls for Congress to craft federal regulation that overrules state AI laws. The Trump administration has made multiple attempts to overrule more restrictive state-level AI regulation, but has failed so far, most notably in the passing of the "One Big Beautiful Bill." The framework focuses on a variety of topics, covering everything from child privacy to the use of AI in the workforce. "Importantly, this framework can succeed only if it is applied uniformly across the United States," The White House writes.
Gamers Hate Nvidia's DLSS 5. Developers Aren't Crazy About It, Either
Nvidia's new AI upscaling gaming technology struck gamers as uncanny and off-putting. Developers don't seem to like it, either, but it could be "the default" in a few years. Nvidia announced a new version of its DLSS AI upscaling technology for its graphics cards earlier this week at its GPU Technology Conference (GTC), which it calls the Super Bowl of AI . But unlike previous versions of DLSS that used AI to improve frame rates in video games, DLSS 5 has a much more ambitious calling: using generative AI to make character faces in games look more realistic and detailed. The demonstration received sharp blowback on social media, with many finding the effect off-putting, reacting with outright disgust, and calling it yet another example of AI slop .
Windows 11 reset: Microsoft pledges more speed, stability, and control
Microsoft is implementing a major Windows 11 reset focused on improving performance, reliability, and user experience following widespread user complaints about system quality and AI integration. PCWorld reports that Copilot's presence will be significantly scaled back, removing it from apps like Notepad, Snipping Tool, and Photos due to user pushback against excessive AI features. Expected improvements include enhanced system stability, repositioned Taskbar, better Start menu functionality, and a more responsive overall experience with tangible progress visible in preview builds. Over the past few months, Microsoft senior executives have quietly made a promise to me directly, as well as to other journalists: They're going to improve Windows.