Meta’s latest AI model is free for all

Notable,  taking a look

Meta’s latest AI model is free for all 

The company hopes that making LLaMA 2 open source might give it the edge over rivals like OpenAI.

By Melissa Heikkilä , July 18, 2023

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | GETTY, ENVATO

Meta is going all in on open-source AI. The company is today unveiling LLaMA 2, its first large language model that’s available for anyone to use—for free. 

Since OpenAI released its hugely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT last November, tech companies have been racing to release models in hopes of overthrowing its supremacy. Meta has been in the slow lane. In February when competitors Microsoft and Google announced their  AI chatbots, Meta rolled out the first, smaller version of LLaMA, restricted to researchers. But it hopes that releasing LLaMA 2, and making it free for anyone to build commercial products on top of, will help it catch up. 

The company is actually releasing a suite of AI models, which include versions of LLaMA 2 in different sizes, as well as a version of the AI model that people can build into a chatbot, similar to ChatGPT. Unlike ChatGPT, which people can access through OpenAI’s website, the model must be downloaded from Meta’s launch partners Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Hugging Face.

“This benefits the entire AI community and gives people options to go with closed-source approaches or open-source approaches for whatever suits their particular application,” says Ahmad Al-Dahle, a vice president at Meta who is leading the company’s generative AI work. “This is a really, really big moment for us.” ...'

A VR Headset. Meta to Lower Age for Users of Headset to 10

Hardly 'proves' safety,  but what would?   As the article suggests, market vs needs?

A virtual reality headset. Meta to Lower Age for Users of VR Headset to 10

The New York Times

Mike Isaac; Adam Satariano; Natasha Singer

June 16, 2023

Social media giant Meta announced its intention to lower the recommended minimum age for users of its Quest virtual reality (VR) headset to 10 from 13. Meta said creating accounts for preteens would require parental approval, while young users would only see applications and content appropriate for their age group. However, VR games are rife with harassment, assaults, bullying, and hate speech, while researchers warn there are few measures for easily reporting misbehavior. Josh Golin at nonprofit children's advocacy group Fairplay said Meta did not prove the safety of its VR products for young people before lowering its age recommendation, which Fairplay said is "clearly driven by the fact that they are trying to compete for a market, not driven by kids' needs." ... ' 

10 million sign up for Meta's Twitter rival app, Threads

Media to extend back.

10 million sign up for Meta's Twitter rival app, Threads

By NPR, July 6, 2023

The logo for Meta's new app, Threads.

Meta's new app appears to mimic Twitter, a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.

Credit: Richard Drew/AP

Meta has unveiled an app called Threads to rival Twitter, targeting users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk.

Threads is billed as a text-based version of Meta's photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides "a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations."

It went live late Wednesday in Apple and Google Android app stores, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying 10 million people had signed up in the first seven hours. There were some early glitches, including Zuckerberg's posts — or Threads as they're dubbed — not loading in several places including the United Kingdom, India and Lebanon. But his replies to other users did appear.

Threads launched in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan — and has already drawn celebrity users like chef Gordon Ramsay, pop star Shakira and actor Jack Black as well as accounts from Airbnb, Guinness World Records, Netflix, Vogue magazine and other media outlets.

From NPR

View Full Article 

A New Metaverse Network plots an Escape from Meta’s ‘walled gardens’

Walling it off, or not?  Not sure.   Our own experiment was clearly walled.

A new metaverse network plots an escape from Meta’s ‘walled gardens’

STORY BY   Thomas Macaulay  In  TheNextWeb

Improbable wants open borders between virtual worlds

June 21, 2023 - 11:54 am

Two years after Mark Zuckerberg launched it into orbit, the metaverse is crashing back to Earth. As the hype sparked by Facebook’s rebrand fades amid jaw-dropping losses, risible selfies, and the generative AI boom, reality is setting in — which is when things start getting interesting.

Metaverse stalwarts are now fighting for competing visions.

On one side are the centralised platforms owned by the likes of Meta and Roblox. Under the control of all-powerful tech giants, these virtual worlds exist in siloes.

On the other side stand advocates for open, interconnected, and decentralised metaverses. In these utopian realms, users can freely traverse spaces and take ownership of their experiences.

Crystals, jets, and magnets — is this how to make cooling greener?

Improbable has firmly planted its flag in the latter camp. The company spent a decade building immersive virtual worlds, from military simulations to K-pop parties, before pivoting to building metaverse infrastructure. While the unicorn’s focus (and fortunes) have fluctuated, Improbable’s faith in open spaces has persisted.

“We have seen how walled gardens and closed networks exploit the people that spend time on the services for the benefit of few,” Herman Narula, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said last year '

More recently, Narula has been pitching an alternative.

“We want to contribute to ensuring the metaverse holds its promise of being a network of meaning that unlocks creativity, social interaction, and economic opportunities, free from gatekeepers,” he said last month.  To bring this vision to (virtual) life, Improbable has launched a new venture: MSquared, a network of metaverses.

The lay of the land

Today’s virtual worlds are ringfenced. In Roblox, for instance, you can use build games, buy weapons, and spend the Robux currency. But you can’t take any of that into Fortnite.

MSquared hopes to dismantle these barriers. Using a suite of technologies, services, and standards — as well as $150m (€138m) in funding — the project promises to power a nexus of interlinked worlds. 

If all goes to plan, the virtual experiences will extend across multiple platforms and an interoperable economy.

“I’m going to get shouted at for calling it this, but one way to describe it is a ‘meta-metaverse’,” Rob Whitehead, Improbable’s co-founder and chief product officer, told TNW.

Whitehead compares the concept to international travel. In this analogy, virtual worlds are akin to individual nations with open borders. If you want to visit a new country, you just bring your wallet and possessions with you. 

Upon arrival, your digital assets could be accessed through blockchain-enabled decentralised identities and cryptocurrencies, or traditional Web2 log-ins and digital goods, like Fortnite outfits and tools.

“We’re the layer that connects those different worlds together,” said Whitehead. “And it’s agnostic as to whether that metaverse is using crypto or non-crypto stuff.”   ... ' 

Metaverse plus AI to be Everywhere?

It does make sense to add to the metaverse, but does the metaverse always make sense?

Mark Zuckerberg says generative AI is coming to ‘every single one of our products’

The company is working on chatbots for Messenger and WhatsApp and image editing tools for Instagram.   in Engadget     Karis sa Bell|@karissabe| June 8, 2023 4:47 PM

Meta’s generative AI plans are starting to come into focus. Though the company hasn’t adopted much in the way of generative AI features yet, Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear he wants Meta to be viewed as one of the leaders in the field.

Now, Axios reports that at a companywide all-hands meeting this week, Zuckerberg laid out some of Meta’s plans in more detail. The CEO reportedly briefed employees on some of the ways Meta plans to put generative AI “into every single one of our products.”

The planned features include AI “agents” for WhatsApp and Messenger, something that Zuckerberg has discussed in the past. And while Axios reports that WhatsApp and Messenger may be first to get the feature, an early version of an AI chatbot was spotted in the Instagram app this week by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi. Screenshots he shared indicated the app could have as many as 30 different “personalities” to choose from.

Also in the works, according to Axios: generative AI photo editing in Instagram. The feature would apparently allow users to edit their photos via text prompts and then share the images back to their Story. Zuckerberg has also recently discussed — during the company's most recent earnings call — post creation tools for Facebook, as well as for the platform’s advertisers.

It’s still unclear just how soon some of these features may launch, but it sounds like Zuckerberg is hoping to see them sooner than later. The company is also hoping employees will come up with some ideas for new generative AI features of their own and is reportedly hosting an internal hackathon to inspire potential new ideas.  ... '

OpenLLaMA is a fully open-source LLM, now ready for business

Brought to my attention.   in   the-encoder.com

OpenLLaMA is a fully open-source LLM, now ready for business

OpenLLaMA is an open-source reproduction of Meta’s LLaMA language model and can be used commercially.

Since the unveiling of Meta’s LLaMA family of large language models and the subsequent leak, the development of open-source chatbots has exploded. Models such as Alpaca, Vicuna, and OpenAssistant use Meta’s models as the basis for their various forms of instruction tuning.

However, LLaMA models are licensed for research use only, which prevents commercial use of those models.

OpenLLaMA reproduces Meta’s language models

Alternatives based on other freely available models do not match the quality of Meta’s models, as LLaMA follows Deepmind’s Chinchilla scaling laws and has been trained on particularly large amounts of data.

How Generational Differences Affect Consumer Attitudes Towards Ads

As a big advertiser, something we thought about. 

Meta Research

How generational differences affect consumer attitudes towards ads

By: Melanie Beer Zeldin

Our research study, in collaboration with CrowdDNA, aims to understand people's relationship with social media ads across different social media platforms.

Advertising has historically been a way for advertisers to position a product or service as the star of an ad and deliver a message to as many people as possible. Technological advances in the past 50 years have empowered consumers and completely changed the way we live, shop and consume content. It changed how social media is used, and how ads are perceived at mind-boggling speed. Today, ads have a two-way relationship with their audience, empowering consumers to use their purchasing power and voices to both buy into brands and challenge those acting irresponsibly. The focus of ads has moved from product and services to putting people at the heart of a campaign.

GenZ, defined as those born between 1995 and 2010, grew up connected 24/7. Real life and virtual life are fluidly connected without a distinction between them. Relationships are built online and in real life. For this generation, social media fulfills a variety of needs and use cases, but not always with a specific purpose. Living a mixed reality allows for a fluid expression of multiple versions of their identities that mirror different aspects of their personalities.

“It [targeted ads] doesn’t bother me. I’m going to go on social media either way, so its better than what I’m seeing is relevant."

GenZ | UK | Social Media User

In contrast, Baby Boomers, defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, grew up without the internet and experienced its evolution. There is a distinct compartmentalization of real life and virtual life. Relationships are built in real life and extended into the online world. Social media is used with a specific purpose and to reconnect with real life relations. This generation has a single identity that is represented on social media and is a more or less accurate reflection of themselves in real life.

These different backgrounds fundamentally affect how both generations experience social media and value advertising on social media. While GenZ considers data usage for ads to be normal, Baby Boomers remember an ad-free internet and are more suspicious. Rather than a cultural shift towards greater privacy concerns among consumers, our research found that there are generational nuances to data tolerance in these markets that informs attitudes about privacy. For GenZ, consenting to data use is the ‘new normal’ and navigating the online world is the norm. For Baby Boomers, privacy concerns have always been present but online data collection and use is a new concept.  ... ' 

Yann LeCun's Bold New Vision for the Future of AI

Like LeCun's views they are always interesting, inspired us early on in AI.   His connection to Meta is interesting given his generally very practical views.

Yann LeCun's Bold New Vision for the Future of AI

By MIT Technology Review, June 28, 2022,  Meta AI Chief Scientist Yann LeCun.

"This idea that we're going to just scale up the current large language models and eventually human-level AI will emerge—I don't believe this at all, not for one second." -Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun, chief scientist at Meta's artificial intelligence (AI) lab and one of the world's most influential AI researchers, has a bold new vision for the next generation of AI. In a draft document shared with MIT Technology Review, LeCun sketches out an approach that he thinks will one day give machines the common sense they need to navigate the world.

"Getting machines to behave like humans and animals has been the quest of my life," he says. LeCun thinks that animal brains run a kind of simulation of the world, which he calls a world model.

From MIT Technology Review

View Full Article (May Require Paid Registration)  

Sample Virtual Worlds Examined

For an upcoming effort I have been asked for an overview of Virtual-Meta worlds and their potential uses in areas like retail and beyond. Recall we worked with IBM on an experiment with 'Second Life' in the 80s.   Below are a list of such worlds, only a few that I have looked at,  via ChatGPT.  Looking in particular how these do/can link with AI enhancement. 

There are many virtual worlds that exist, each with their own unique features and user communities. Here are some examples of popular virtual worlds:

1. Second Life: As mentioned earlier, Second Life is a virtual world where users can create their own avatars and explore a vast virtual world.

2.Minecraft: While Minecraft is primarily a game, it can also be considered a virtual world. In Minecraft, users can build and explore their own virtual environments, and interact with other players in multiplayer mode.

3.Roblox: Roblox is a platform that allows users to create and play their own games, as well as socialize and interact with other users in a virtual world.

4.VRChat: VRChat is a virtual reality platform where users can create and customize avatars, explore virtual worlds, and interact with other users in real-time.

5. IMVU: IMVU is a virtual world where users can create and customize avatars, socialize with other users, and even shop for virtual goods using real money.

6. Entropia Universe: Entropia Universe is a virtual world where users can explore a vast universe, hunt creatures, mine resources, and even engage in real-money transactions.

7. Kaneva: Kaneva is a virtual world that allows users to create and customize avatars, explore virtual environments, and interact with other users in real-time.

These are just a few examples of the many virtual worlds that exist. Each virtual world has its own unique features and user community, and users can choose to participate in the virtual world that best fits their interests and preferences.

OpenLLaMA is a fully open-source LLM, now ready for business

New LLM Connections are open for business, have been trying for a while, though are still a bit choppy.

OpenLLaMA is a fully open-source LLM, now ready for business

OpenLLaMA is an open-source reproduction of Meta’s LLaMA language model and can be used commercially.

Since the unveiling of Meta’s LLaMA family of large language models and the subsequent leak, the development of open-source chatbots has exploded. Models such as Alpaca, Vicuna, and OpenAssistant use Meta’s models as the basis for their various forms of instruction tuning.

However, LLaMA models are licensed for research use only, which prevents commercial use of those models.

OpenLLaMA reproduces Meta’s language models

Alternatives based on other freely available models do not match the quality of Meta’s models, as LLaMA follows Deepmind’s Chinchilla scaling laws and has been trained on particularly large amounts of data.

THE DECODER Newsletter

Researchers at Berkeley AI Research want to replicate Meta’s LLaMA models in the OpenLLaMA project. The team is using Together’s RedPajama dataset for the project. The open-source platform also announced its intention to reproduce the LLaMA models in April, releasing the 1.2 trillion parameter dataset as a first step.

The Berkeley team is now releasing an early version of the 7-billion-parameter OpenLLaMA model, which has so far been trained on 300 billion of 1.2 trillion tokens. Performance is already said to be approaching the level of LLaMA, and the team is confident that the fully trained OpenLLaMA will be competitive with Meta’s original .... ' 

Meta Announcement

Meta-AI

COMPUTER VISION

DINOv2: State-of-the-art computer vision models with self-supervised learning

Today, we are open-sourcing DINOv2, the first method for training computer vision models that uses self-supervised learning to achieve results that match or surpass the standard approach used in the field.

Meta AI has built DINOv2, a new method for training high-performance computer vision models.

DINOv2 delivers strong performance and does not require fine-tuning. This makes it suitable for use as a backbone for many different computer vision tasks.

Because it uses self-supervision, DINOv2 can learn from any collection of images. It can also learn features, such as depth estimation, that the current standard approach cannot.

We are open-sourcing our model and sharing an interactive demo.

Today, we are open-sourcing DINOv2, the first method for training computer vision models that uses self-supervised learning to achieve results that match or surpass the standard approach used in the field...'

Meta LLama Shares a New Large Language Model

 Meta moves with Language model with better design they say for research.  13 Billion parameters.

Meta Introduces Large Language Model LLaMA as a Competitor for OpenAI

ERIC HAL SCHWARTZ on February 27, 2023 in Voicebot.AI

Meta has shared a new large language model called the Large Language Model Meta AI (LLaMA). The model is designed to aid researchers working on generative AI for language to solve some of the problems that emerge in products like ChatGPT.

META LLAMA

Meta is releasing LLaMA, a collection of four different models, under a license explicitly for research and not commercial use. Research universities, non-profits, and industry R&D labs will have access to LLaMA, but not Meta’s commercial rivals. The LLaMA collection is impressive if it can match Meta’s claims. The tech giant says the LLaMA-13B, referring to its 13 billion parameters, outperforms GPT-3 in most metrics despite being the second smallest of the LLaMA models and capable of running on only one of the admittedly advanced Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. The biggest LLaMA, at 65 billion parameters, is supposedly a match for the highest end of Google and DeepMind’s models.

“Smaller, more performant models such as LLaMA enable others in the research community who don’t have access to large amounts of infrastructure to study these models, further democratizing access in this important, fast-changing field. Training smaller foundation models like LLaMA is desirable in the large language model space because it requires far less computing power and resources to test new approaches, validate others’ work, and explore new use cases,” Meta explained in its announcement. “We believe that the entire AI community — academic researchers, civil society, policymakers, and industry — must work together to develop clear guidelines around responsible AI in general and responsible large language models in particular. We look forward to seeing what the community can learn — and eventually build — using LLaMA.”

META CAUTION

LLaMA’s release doesn’t include any option for the kind of generative AI chatbots that have exploded in popularity of late. Instead, LLaMA is to “address the risks of bias, toxic comments, and hallucinations.” That also means Meta won’t face the need to immediately shut it down in a few days like the Galactica Large Language Model. Shared in November to demonstrate using generative text AI to write academic papers, Galactica quickly attracted a ton of online ridicule over nonsensical and problematic writing, leading to its removal less than a week later. LLaMA doesn’t even include the limited demo collection shared when Meta showed off its Make-A-Video synthetic media engine. ... ' 

Meta, Yet Another Contender in the AI Rush?

Is Meta poised for this too?     Must this be VR oriented? 

Meta, Long an A.I. Leader, Tries Not to Be Left Out of the Boom  By The New York Times, February 8, 2023

Meta has been left out now that Silicon Valley is gripped with excitement by generative A.I., the name for technologies that generate text, images and other media on their own.

Credit: Michael Furler

Two weeks before a chatbot called ChatGPT appeared on the internet in November and wowed the world, Meta, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, unveiled a chatbot of its own.

Called Galactica, it was designed for scientific research. It could instantly write its own articles, solve math problems, generate computer code and annotate images.

Like ChatGPT, Galactica also played fast and loose with facts, making up mathematical proofs, misstating historical dates and spinning tall tales. One user coaxed the chatbot into talking about the history of bears in space. When asked who runs Silicon Valley, Galactica replied, "Steve Jobs."

But unlike OpenAI, the tiny San Francisco lab that made ChatGPT, Meta encountered an avalanche of complaints about Galactica's mishaps. After just three days, the company, which has faced scrutiny for spreading misinformation and hate speech through its social networking apps, removed Galactica from the internet.

From The New York Times    

Attackers Bypass Coinbase, MetaMask 2FA via TeamViewer

Interesting connection with TeamViewer,   Security in Meta?

 Attackers Bypass Coinbase, MetaMask 2FA via TeamViewer

BleepingComputer

Bill Toulas, November 21, 2022

Anti-phishing company PIXM found scammers are waging a phishing campaign to pilfer cryptocurrency by accessing the Coinbase, MetaMask, Crypto.com, and KuCoin exchanges through the circumvention of two-factor authentication (2FA) safeguards. The attackers exploit the Microsoft Azure Web Apps service to host a network of phishing websites that entice victims to enter. When victims visit one of the phishing sites, a scammer-controlled customer support chat window leads them through a defrauding process. The attack involves a fake form followed by a prompt, then progresses to a prompt requesting the 2FA code for accessing the account. The hackers persuade victims to download and install a "TeamViewer" remote access app to bypass authentication.  ... 

Big Players Ready for Meta Headset Offerings

Big Players and more Meta Reality Hype and Prep

Apple Is Now Calling Its AR/VR Headset Operating System ‘xrOS’

By Josh Norem on December 5, 2022  in ExtremeTech

Apple seems to be getting close to the launch of its much-hyped AR/VR headset, as it’s reportedly settled on a name for the operating system. Noted Apple soothsayer Mark Gurman is reporting it’s going to be xrOS. This is shorthand for “extended reality,” as opposed to strictly augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR). Previously it was believed to be called realityOS, but Apple has allegedly ditched that for a shorter name, the report said. (The Bloomberg article is paywalled and was summarized by MacRumors.)

The device will be Apple’s first new product since the Apple Watch, which debuted in 2015. The new naming confirms Apple’s plans to follow in the footsteps of the Meta Quest Pro by offering mixed, or extended, reality. That approach will allow the user to experience both VR, a fully digital world, and AR, virtual objects overlaid with reality. This is seen as a more flexible offering than just sticking with one technology. Current headsets like the Meta Quest 2 and Valve Index are strictly VR headsets. ... ' 

Three Key Takeaways from Meta's Galactica AI

Galactica AI,  general idea is good, navigating complex forms of data is useful.  One of our early AI successes did exactly this for key internal knowledge.  Make it easy to easy to use, and importantly make it easy to validate and update in changing contexts.

Three Takeaways from Meta's Galactica AI

By TechTalks, November 23, 2022

We should look at Galactica's initial failure as another scientific experiment...and, every failed experiment brings us one step closer to success.

Meta's most recent large language model (LLM) release, Galactica, was supposed to help scientists navigate tons of published scientific information. Its developers presented it as being able to find citations, summarize academic literature, solve math problems, and perform other tasks that help scientists in research and writing papers.

However, three days after the release, Meta had to shut down the online demo following a deluge of criticism by scientists and tech media about the model's incorrect and biased output. While Galactica was obviously not a success, its short history provides us with some useful lessons about LLMs and the future of AI research.

From TechTalks   View Full Article    

Microsoft Works with Meta

Now this does make sense 

Microsoft partners with Meta to bring Teams, Office, Windows, and Xbox to VR

The biggest Microsoft and Meta partnership since the Windows Phone days

By TOM WARREN / @tomwarren   in The Verge

Oct 11, 2022, 1:46 PM 

A first look at Microsoft Teams running in a Meta VR headset

Microsoft Teams on Meta’s Quest VR headsets. Image: Meta

Microsoft and Meta looked like they were on a collision course last year, poised to compete heavily for the future of work in the metaverse. But today, both companies announced they are partnering to collaborate on how people will work and even game in virtual reality. That starts with Microsoft bringing its biggest services — Teams, Office, Windows, and even Xbox Cloud Gaming — to Meta’s Quest VR headsets.

It’s a surprise partnership that will see Microsoft and Meta combine their strengths. Microsoft sees an opportunity to bring Teams and its other productivity experiences to a capable VR headset, and Meta gets a key partner in its grand metaverse plan. .... ' 

Meta Designated as Extremest

 In BBC, already seen widely in the news.

Russia confirms Meta's designation as extremist

The Russian authorities have added Meta - which owns Facebook and Instagram - to a list of terrorist and extremist organisations, the country's Interfax agency reports.

The two platforms were banned in Russia in March for "Russophobia".

It followed Meta's announcement it would permit posts such as "death to Russian invaders" but not credible threats against civilians

Meta appealed against the ban but it was upheld by a Moscow court in June.

The ban did not apply to WhatsApp, which Meta also owns. ... ' 

Meta Goes Unsupervised for Try at Human AI

 Looking to see a good example. 

Meta’s AI Takes an Unsupervised Step Forward In the quest for human-level intelligent AI, Meta is betting on self-supervised learning      By ELIZA STRICKLAND

Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, doesn’t lose sight of his far-off goal, even when talking about concrete steps in the here and now. “We want to build intelligent machines that learn like animals and humans,” LeCun tells IEEE Spectrum in an interview.

Today’s concrete step is a series of papers from Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, on a type of self-supervised learning (SSL) for AI systems. SSL stands in contrast to supervised learning, in which an AI system learns from a labeled data set (the labels serve as the teacher who provides the correct answers when the AI system checks its work). LeCun has often spoken about his strong belief that SSL is a necessary prerequisite for AI systems that can build “world models” and can therefore begin to gain humanlike faculties such as reason, common sense, and the ability to transfer skills and knowledge from one context to another. The new papers show how a self-supervised system called a masked auto-encoder (MAE) learned to reconstruct images, video, and even audio from very patchy and incomplete data. While MAEs are not a new idea, Meta has extended the work to new domains.

By figuring out how to predict missing data, either in a static image or a video or audio sequence, the MAE system must be constructing a world model, LeCun says. “If it can predict what’s going to happen in a video, it has to understand that the world is three-dimensional, that some objects are inanimate and don’t move by themselves, that other objects are animate and harder to predict, all the way up to predicting complex behavior from animate persons,” he says. And once an AI system has an accurate world model, it can use that model to plan actions.  .... '

Leap Seconds Confuse Computers

 Unknown to me ....

Leap seconds cause chaos for computers — so Meta wants to get rid of them

Facebook’s parent company wants new ways to calculate time

By James Vincent  Jul 26, 2022  in TheVerge

Since 1972 there have been 27 leap seconds: additional seconds added to the world’s common clock — Coordinated Universal Time or UTC — to account for changes in the Earth’s rate of rotation. Historically, our concept of time is defined as a fraction of the length of the solar day, but as the Earth’s rate of spin is somewhat irregular (slowing and speeding based on various factors) it means solar time and universal time tend to drift apart. So, in order to compensate, we add leap seconds. And this really confuses computers. .... '