Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled agents to autonomously perform complex, open-ended tasks. However, many existing frameworks depend heavily on manually predefined tools and workflows, which hinder their adaptability, scalability, and generalization across domains. In this work, we introduce Alita--a generalist agent designed with the principle of "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," enabling scalable agentic reasoning through minimal predefinition and maximal self-evolution. For minimal predefinition, Alita is equipped with only one component for direct problem-solving, making it much simpler and neater than previous approaches that relied heavily on hand-crafted, elaborate tools and workflows. This clean design enhances its potential to generalize to challenging questions, without being limited by tools. For Maximal self-evolution, we enable the creativity of Alita by providing a suite of general-purpose components to autonomously construct, refine, and reuse external capabilities by generating task-related model context protocols (MCPs) from open source, which contributes to scalable agentic reasoning. Notably, Alita achieves 75.15% pass@1 and 87.27% pass@3 accuracy, which is top-ranking among general-purpose agents, on the GAIA benchmark validation dataset, 74.00% and 52.00% pass@1, respectively, on Mathvista and PathVQA, outperforming many agent systems with far greater complexity. More details will be updated at $\href{https://github.com/CharlesQ9/Alita}{https://github.com/CharlesQ9/Alita}$.

For long-term autonomy, most place recognition methods are mainly evaluated on simplified scenarios or simulated datasets, which cannot provide solid evidence to evaluate the readiness for current Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). In this paper, we present a long-term place recognition dataset for use in mobile localization under large-scale dynamic environments. This dataset includes a campus-scale track and a city-scale track: 1) the campus-track focuses the long-term property, we record LiDAR device and an omnidirectional camera on 10 trajectories, and each trajectory are repeatly recorded 8 times under variant illumination conditions. 2) the city-track focuses the large-scale property, we mount the LiDAR device on the vehicle and traversing through a 120km trajectories, which contains open streets, residential areas, natural terrains, etc. They includes 200 hours of raw data of all kinds scenarios within urban environments. The ground truth position for both tracks are provided on each trajectory, which is obtained from the Global Position System with an additional General ICP based point cloud refinement. To simplify the evaluation procedure, we also provide the Python-API with a set of place recognition metrics is proposed to quickly load our dataset and evaluate the recognition performance against different methods. This dataset targets at finding methods with high place recognition accuracy and robustness, and providing real robotic system with long-term autonomy. The dataset and the provided tools can be accessed from https://github.com/MetaSLAM/ALITA.

"How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" breathed some fire into a slumping box office with a franchise-best $55.5 million debut over Oscar weekend. Writer-director Dean DeBlois' third and supposedly final installment in the "How to Train Your Dragon" series notched the best opening of the year in U.S. and Canadian theaters. Going into the weekend, overall ticket sales for 2019 were down 18 percent, according to Comscore, throwing cold water on the record box office of 2018. But as Hollywood was set to gather for the Academy Awards on Sunday, "The Hidden World" lent the industry some good news -- albeit not a hint at all of the magnitude of what that was in theaters last Oscar weekend when "Black Panther" was the top film. Made for $129 million, "The Hidden World" rode good reviews (91 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and warm audience reaction (an A CinemaScore) to exceed the $43.7 million opening of the 2010 original (which ultimately made $494.9 million worldwide) and the $49 million opening of the 2014 sequel (which amassed $621.5 million).

Alita: Battle Angel is an interesting and wild ride, jam-packed full of concepts around cybernetics, dystopian futures and cyberpunk themes. The film – in cinemas now – revolves around Alita (Rosa Salazar), a female cyborg (with original human brain) that is recovered by cybernetic doctor Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) and brought into the world of the future (the film is set in 2563). Hundreds of years after a catastrophic war, called "The Fall", the population of Earth now resides in a wealthy sky city called Zalem and a sprawling junkyard called Iron City where the detritus from Zalem is dumped. We follow Alita's story as she makes friends and enemies, and discovers more about her past. Her character is great – she has many of the mannerisms of a teenage girl combined with a determination and overarching sense of what is right – "I do not stand by in the presence of evil."

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the pair belonging to the cyborg heroine of Alita: Battle Angel are a set of double doors flung wide open, as limpid and blossoming as a Keane painting's. Alita (Rosa Salazar) enters the movie atop a heap of scrap outside the settlement of Iron City, which is where most of what human life remains on Earth has clustered in the mid–26th century. Or rather, her head does, along with a remnant of metallic spine dangling below. Storefront cybernetic surgeon Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) finds Alita's central nervous system and rebuilds her from the neck down, but the movie, which was directed by Robert Rodriguez and co-written by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis, works in the other direction, from the gut--or is it the crotch--to the heart, only occasionally making it all the way to the brain. Although it's set in the year 2563, the driving force behind Alita is nostalgia.

I'm going to go ahead and spoil Alita: Battle Angel for you. Not because I'm a dick, but because revealing the ending tells you nothing about the plot and will ruin absolutely nothing about the film. It ends--drum roll, please--with Alita (Rosa Salazar), sword in hand, staring down her foe, her Big Bad. Then it cuts to black and the credits play. The whole movie is a setup for a punch line that never comes.

The new effects-driven science-fiction thriller "Alita: Battle Angel" stages a behind-the-scenes tussle for the ages: it is a collaboration between Robert Rodriguez, a filmmaker known for such neo-pulp action films as "From Dusk till Dawn" and "Sin City," and James Cameron, a filmmaker whose technological sophistication is matched by a simplistic emotionalism. Here they are thrown together in a virtual video ring and try to collaborate. And, however sincere and earnest their alliance may be, the movie itself tells a different tale: Cameron's sensibility wins, hands down. Not only does Rodriguez give up most of the fun, but Cameron also runs away with the substance. And that's all the more unfortunate, as the two are evenly matched early on in the film and the outcome of their efforts appears, at first, promising.

When companies lose to their competition, that's when workers lose jobs." These astute comments and others by Jeff Burnstein, president at Association for Automation (A3), were part of a response to a New York Times column written by Thomas B. Edsall that blames robots and artificial intelligence for the displacement of large chunks of Midwestern workers and claims this led to today's current political divisions. I think it would be far more entertaining for us all to check out "Alita: Battle Angel," an epic adventure of hope, empowerment and technology. Like robots and automation, Alita has unique abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control. This 20th Century Fox film is the futuristic world of Robert Rodriguez, James Cameron and Jon Landau, opening Feb. 14. "Embrace these robots and the new ones as they arrive." In his column, Edsall quotes economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University: "The Midwest and sections of the South have far higher ratios of robots to population than other regions of the United States." It seems to me Edsall doesn't understand where much of the manufacturing in the United States is located. He should look up where manufacturing contributes well to the U.S. economy and at a higher rate than many other industries. "In actuality, robots and automation have saved and created jobs--and will continue to do so," reads Burnstein's column. Burnstein also noted that Edsall has a gross misunderstanding of the role automation plays in the American economy. "Over the last 25 years, many American manufacturers found themselves unable to compete with the lower costs and higher productivity of foreign manufacturers," writes Burnstein. "They closed their doors or moved their operations.