Month: November 2025

Meta’s star AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave for own startup

AI pioneer reportedly frustrated with Meta’s shift from research to rapid product releases.

Meta’s chief AI scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun plans to leave the company to launch his own startup focused on a different type of AI called “world models,” the Financial Times reported. The French-US scientist has reportedly told associates he will depart in the coming months and is already in early talks to raise funds for the new venture. The departure comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg radically overhauled Meta’s AI operations after deciding the company had fallen behind rivals such as OpenAI and Google.

World models are hypothetical AI systems that some AI engineers expect to develop an internal “understanding” of the physical world by learning from video and spatial data rather than text alone. Unlike current large language models (such as the kind that power ChatGPT) that predict the next segment of data in a sequence, world models would ideally simulate cause-and-effect scenarios, understand physics, and enable machines to reason and plan more like animals do. LeCun has said this architecture could take a decade to fully develop.

While some AI experts believe that Transformer-based AI models—such as large language models, video synthesis models, and interactive world synthesis models—have emergently modeled physics or absorbed the structural rules of the physical world from training data examples, the evidence so far generally points to sophisticated pattern-matching rather than a base understanding of how the physical world actually works.

Read full article

Comments

Solder Party’s KeebDeck is a cheap, open source 69-key thumb keyboard

A few years ago Solder Party started selling tiny USB keyboards made by combining an actual BlackBerry keyboard (ripped from an old device) with a custom PCB and USB-C connector. But since BlackBerry is out of business, eventually it’s going to g…

A few years ago Solder Party started selling tiny USB keyboards made by combining an actual BlackBerry keyboard (ripped from an old device) with a custom PCB and USB-C connector. But since BlackBerry is out of business, eventually it’s going to get harder to find devices to cannibalize for their keyboards. So Solder Party has […]

The post Solder Party’s KeebDeck is a cheap, open source 69-key thumb keyboard appeared first on Liliputing.

Solder Party’s KeebDeck is a cheap, open source 69-key thumb keyboard

A few years ago Solder Party started selling tiny USB keyboards made by combining an actual BlackBerry keyboard (ripped from an old device) with a custom PCB and USB-C connector. But since BlackBerry is out of business, eventually it’s going to g…

A few years ago Solder Party started selling tiny USB keyboards made by combining an actual BlackBerry keyboard (ripped from an old device) with a custom PCB and USB-C connector. But since BlackBerry is out of business, eventually it’s going to get harder to find devices to cannibalize for their keyboards. So Solder Party has […]

The post Solder Party’s KeebDeck is a cheap, open source 69-key thumb keyboard appeared first on Liliputing.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die trailer ushers in AI apocalypse

“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. You’re in for a really weird night.”

Director Gore Verbinski has racked up an impressive filmography over the years, from The Ring and the first three installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to the 2011 Oscar-nominated animated western Rango. Granted, he’s had his share of failures (*cough* The Lone Ranger *cough*), but if this trailer is any indication, Verbinski has another winner on his hands with the absurdist sci-fi dark comedy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

Sam Rockwell stars as the otherwise unnamed “Man from the Future,” who shows up at a Los Angeles diner looking like a homeless person but claiming to be a time traveler from an apocalyptic future. He’s there to recruit the locals into his war against a rogue AI, although the diner patrons are understandably dubious about his sanity. (“I come from a nightmare apocalypse,” he assures the crowd about his grubby appearance. “This is the height of f*@ing fashion!”) Somehow, he convinces a handful of Angelenos to join his crusade, and judging by the remaining footage, all kinds of chaos breaks out.

In addition to the eminently watchable Rockwell, the cast includes Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid, Michael Pena as Mark, Zazie Beetz as Janet, and Juno Temple as Susan. Dino Fetscher, Anna Acton, Asim Chaudhury, Daniel Barnett, and Domonique Maher also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles. Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Love and Monsters) penned the script. This is Verbinski’s first indie film, and Tom Ortenberg, CEO of distributor Briarcliff Entertainment, praised it as “wildly original, endlessly entertaining, and unlike anything audiences have seen before.” Color us intrigued.

Read full article

Comments

Review: New Framework Laptop 16 takes a fresh stab at the upgradeable laptop GPU

New components make it more useful and powerful but no less odd.

The original Framework Laptop 16 was trying to crack a problem that laptop makers have wrestled with on and off for years: Can you deliver a reasonably powerful, portable workstation and gaming laptop that supports graphics card upgrades just like a desktop PC?

Specs at a glance: Framework Laptop 16 (2025)
OS Windows 11 25H2
CPU AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (4 Zen 5 cores, 4 Zen 5c cores)
RAM 32GB DDR5-5600 (upgradeable)
GPU AMD Radeon 860M (integrated)/Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (dedicated)
SSD 1TB Western Digital Black SN770
Battery 85 WHr
Display 16-inch 2560×1600 165 Hz matte non-touchscreen
Connectivity 6x recessed USB-C ports (2x USB 4, 4x USB 3.2) with customizable “Expansion Card” dongles
Weight 4.63 pounds (2.1 kg) without GPU, 5.29 pounds (2.4 kg) with GPU
Price as tested Roughly $2,649 for pre-built edition; $2,517 for DIY edition with no OS

Even in these days of mostly incremental, not-too-exciting GPU upgrades, the graphics card in a gaming PC or graphics-centric workstation will still feel its age faster than your CPU will. And the chance to upgrade that one component for hundreds of dollars instead of spending thousands replacing the entire machine is an appealing proposition.

Upgradeable, swappable GPUs would also make your laptop more flexible—you can pick and choose from various GPUs from multiple vendors based on what you want and need, whether that’s raw performance, power efficiency, Linux support, or CUDA capabilities.

Read full article

Comments