Month: January 2025

Elon Musk Just Pulled Something Unbelievably Sketchy at the US Treasury

Elon Musk Just Pulled Something Unbelievably Sketchy at the US Treasury

Nothing to see here. ​​Forbidden Treasure It looks like Elon Musk and his buddies have forced another US official out of government. The Washington Post reports that senior Department of the Treasury official David Lebryk abruptly announced his retirement on Friday, after clashing with Musk’s allies at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Lebryk has worked at the agency for decades. Since the election, according to the report, DOGE has hounded him for access to the Treasury’s sensitive payment system, which is used to send out trillions of dollars every year and is normally accessed only by a small number of senior officials.  Why Lebryk clashed over the requests is unclear. But maybe he just didn’t like the idea of handing over the keys for a trillion-dollar money pipeline to Musk — a walking conflict of interest — and his retinue of sketchy and underqualified DOGE lackeys. Feds Will Roll Musk fueled Trump’s election victory by promising to gut federal agencies and drastically slash government spending. In the process, he’s made no secret of his …

OpenAI Launches o3-mini, a Cost-Efficient Reasoning Model Rivaling DeepSeek

OpenAI Launches o3-mini, a Cost-Efficient Reasoning Model Rivaling DeepSeek

OpenAI today released o3-mini, a new, more cost efficient model that’s available for both ChatGPT and the OpenAI API starting today. OpenAI previewed o3-mini in December, but it is ready at a time when OpenAI is aiming to keep up with Chinese company DeepSeek. According to OpenAI, o3-mini “advances the boundaries” of what’s possible with smaller, more efficient models. o3-mini is designed for STEM capabilities, and OpenAI says that it has particular strength in science, math, and coding. o3-mini is search capable, and it can locate up-to-date answers with links to relevant web sources. o3-mini is OpenAI’s first small reasoning model that supports features like function calling, Structured Outputs, and developer messages. There are three reasoning effort options, including low, medium, and high, to optimize for different use cases that prioritize processing power for complex challenges or speed. OpenAI is keeping o1 as its standard general knowledge reasoning model, but o3-mini is available for technical domains that require precision and speed. When used with ChatGPT, o3-mini uses medium reasoning effort for a balance between speed …

15 Signs Someone Is Good For Your Mental Health

15 Signs Someone Is Good For Your Mental Health

We already know how damaging it can be to hang around with someone who is detrimental to your mental health. As a matter of fact, your most meaningful relationships are just as important to having good mental health as self-care. A healthy relationship can greatly benefit your mental health, especially during tough times. Positive social connections can lower instances of mental health issues like anxiety and depression, while heightening your self-esteem, and building your capacity for empathy and trust. And not only are strong relationships important for your mental wellness, but they also benefit your overall health by strengthening your immune system, which might just lengthen your life. If you’re wondering how a person in your life is good for your mental health, there are signs to look out for. 15 Signs Someone Is Good For Your Mental Health 1. You feel comfortable and safe around them PeopleImages from Getty Images Signature via Canva There is nothing more important a person can do for you than make you feel safe and secure in their presence. …

Van Gogh Museum Denies Attribution for Long-Lost Portrait

Van Gogh Museum Denies Attribution for Long-Lost Portrait

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said on Friday that a long-lost portrait was, in fact, not by Vincent van Gogh, contradicting a 458-page report by the New York–based firm LMI Group International that claimed it was by the famed painter. The painting in question, titled Elimar (1889), depicts a fisherman with a round hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth. The fisherman appears transfixed as he repairs his net near a shore. The word “Elimar,” presumed to be the man’s name, is scrawled in the lower righthand corner. LMI Group said that the portrait would have been created while van Gogh was at the Saint-Paul psychiatric sanitarium in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Van Gogh had checked himself into the sanitarium; he remained there from May 1889 and May 1890. Related Articles To assess the painting, LMI Group assembled a team of roughly 20 experts from a variety of fields, including chemists, curators, and patent lawyers. In 2019, the firm paid an undisclosed sum for the work, purchasing it from an anonymous antiques collector who found it …

New Music Friday January 31: The Weeknd, Will Smith, Big Sean, JENNIE, Jeff Goldblum and More

New Music Friday January 31: The Weeknd, Will Smith, Big Sean, JENNIE, Jeff Goldblum and More

Happy New Music Friday! The weekend is here, which means more streaming, new playlists and the best that music has to offer — and ET has you covered for everything in between. Music’s Biggest Night is this weekend! Performers include Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, Teddy Swims, Benson Boone, RAYE, Doechii, Shakira and Shaboozey. A series of special performances will highlight the awards, including the In Memoriam segment, a star-studded salute to Quincy Jones and touching tributes celebrating the spirit of the city of Los Angeles. Brad Paisley, Brittany Howard, Chris Martin, Cynthia Erivo, Herbie Hancock, Jacob Collier, Janelle Monae, John Legend, Lainey Wilson, Sheryl Crow, St. Vincent and Stevie Wonder are set to appear. Presenters include Taylor Swift, SZA, Cardi B, Gloria Estefan, Olivia Rodrigo, Queen Latifah, Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith, Victoria Monét and Will Smith. The Recording Academy and MusiCares announced they are partnering with Direct Relief, the California Community Foundation and the Pasadena Community Foundation to bolster support for those impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires. On the GRAMMY telecast, attendees, …

What to Know About Collision Avoidance Systems on Planes

What to Know About Collision Avoidance Systems on Planes

Years ago, Mr. Cox said, he was descending in a Boeing 737 over Orlando International Airport when the system alerted him and his co-pilot to traffic nearby. The pilots looked around for another aircraft, but saw nothing. Then, TCAS provided an urgent instruction: “Climb.” Mr. Cox said they did so and later saw a smaller aircraft beneath them. A collision would have been catastrophic, he said. After a series of collisions, culminating in the 1986 crash of a passenger jet and smaller aircraft near Cerritos, Calif., that killed 82 people, Congress instructed the Federal Aviation Administration to require TCAS on all large commercial airplanes. It is optional on military aircraft, though, and it’s not clear if the Army helicopter involved in the crash on Wednesday was equipped with it. That crash occurred at a relatively low altitude, though, where TCAS’s most critical collision avoidance instructions would have been limited by design, Mr. Cox and other safety experts said. As jets approach an airport, they are likely to be closer to each other than at higher …

DeepSeek might not be such good news for energy after all

DeepSeek might not be such good news for energy after all

Add the fact that other tech firms, inspired by DeepSeek’s approach, may now start building their own similar low-cost reasoning models, and the outlook for energy consumption is already looking a lot less rosy. The life cycle of any AI model has two phases: training and inference. Training is the often months-long process in which the model learns from data. The model is then ready for inference, which happens each time anyone in the world asks it something. Both usually take place in data centers, where they require lots of energy to run chips and cool servers.  On the training side for its R1 model, DeepSeek’s team improved what’s called a “mixture of experts” technique, in which only a portion of a model’s billions of parameters—the “knobs” a model uses to form better answers—are turned on at a given time during training. More notably, they improved reinforcement learning, where a model’s outputs are scored and then used to make it better. This is often done by human annotators, but the DeepSeek team got good at …

Lab-grown T cells engineered to live longer and fight cancer more effectively

Lab-grown T cells engineered to live longer and fight cancer more effectively

Researchers have developed a new method for growing T cells in the lab, allowing them to survive longer and fight cancer more effectively. This advancement, detailed in Cell Metabolism, could significantly improve immunotherapy, a treatment that harnesses the body’s immune system to target cancer. Immunotherapy has transformed cancer treatment, with strategies like immune checkpoint blockade and adoptive cell therapy (ACT) helping the body’s T cells attack tumors. However, these treatments face major hurdles, particularly in solid tumors. While ACT has shown success against blood cancers, solid tumors present metabolic barriers that weaken T cells before they can eliminate cancer cells. A major challenge in ACT is the tumor microenvironment (TME), which starves T cells of essential nutrients and alters their function. When T cells face continuous stimulation without proper metabolic support, they lose their ability to fight tumors. Scientists have been working to improve the metabolic resilience of these cells, but the traditional lab methods used to expand T cells may be part of the problem. Graphical abstract. Hyperglycemic culture conditions promote expansion at the …

OpenAI launches new o3-mini model – here’s how free ChatGPT users can try it

OpenAI launches new o3-mini model – here’s how free ChatGPT users can try it

OpenAI On the last day of OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘shipmas,’ the company unveiled its latest models, o3 and o3-mini, which excel at reasoning and even outperform o1 on a series of benchmarks, including math and science. At launch, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said o3 was slated to drop at the end of January, and today, the company made good on its promise.  o3-mini On Friday, OpenAI released its o3-mini model, the most cost-efficient model in OpenAI’s reasoning series, to the public. Until now, that series has been comprised of o1 and o1-mini. Like its predecessor, the model is particularly strong in science, math, and coding, according to the company.  OpenAI o3-mini is now available in ChatGPT and the API.Pro users will have unlimited access to o3-mini and Plus & Team users will have triple the rate limits (vs o1-mini).Free users can try o3-mini in ChatGPT by selecting the Reason button under the message composer. — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 31, 2025 When o3-mini is selected, it will use medium reasoning effort, which balances speed and …