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This weekβs newsletter is sponsored by Opencast. Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2022, Opencast stands out as a dynamic and rapidly expanding technology consultancy. Renowned for its expertise, the firm operates at the core of sectors like government, global finance, and burgeoning enterprises, offering a spectrum of digital consultancy and services. What truly distinguishes Opencast is the unique qualities of its team, embodying core values and fostering a collaborative work ethos. Embracing a flexible hybrid approach, the company empowers its team to work efficiently from the most suitable locations, ensuring optimal productivity and client satisfaction.
Opencast are currently hiring across Dev and Data on Haystack. Check out their cultural values, engineering practices and more on the Haystack app π²
π Big Tech & Startup
In a bold challenge to Silicon Valley's AI dominance, Finnish company Silo has unveiled Poro, a trailblazing multilingual model trained in both Finnish and English. This innovative approach, leveraging a staggering 7 petabytes of data from the EU-funded High Performance Language Technologies project, outstrips the data used for GPT-3.5, indicating a potential edge in less commonly spoken languages. Poro's "cross-training" method, which Silo plans to open source, uniquely enables understanding and response in Finnish using English data, a significant stride in AI language processing. Furthermore, Poro's development on the EU-funded supercomputer LUMI, diverging from the industry-standard NVIDIA chips, marks a strategic shift and a potential leap forward for Europe in the competitive AI landscape, heralding a new era of inclusivity and diversity in AI capabilities.
π Science & Futuristic Tech
In an enthralling revelation, experts dispel the rumour that Saturn's iconic rings are vanishing by 2025. Contrary to the alarming headlines, these majestic rings are indeed gradually dissipating, but their disappearance is set to occur over a much more extended timeline, estimated at 300 million years. This slower disintegration, caused by a process known as "ring rain," where particles from the rings are drawn into Saturn by its gravity, ensures that the planet's stunning halos will continue to captivate astronomers and stargazers for generations to come.
βοΈ Miscellaneous
Designs for a new AI-controlled plane that could fly from London to New York in three hours have been revealed π«
A former US Air Force officer has revealed an encounter with a UFO βthe size of a football fieldβ that happened 20 years ago πΈ
Scientists have created a βFrankensteinβ monkey using stem-cell tech π